My plan for the weekend was to get a few bits and bobs finished off, but most importantly, to get the cheesemobile fired up and purring.

First up was the brakes. Starting with the hand brake attachments. So long as the adjuster was slackened off a whole load, these went on OK. The manual doesn’t make the final connection position that clear but a little close inspection and things became clearer.

Time to fill, bleed, repeat. There was one joint that I hadn’t tightened fully but other than that, things went OK. The pedal never really got solid though and the position is too low at the moment to allow heel toe. I’m hoping that after the brakes have been run, bleeding more will finally get everything solid.

One query for Caterham will be that the right rear bleed nipple took a different sized spanner than the others and also looked like it could be sucking in air as it never lost its air bubbles completely.

With the brakes done, it was onto the engine! It was a bit of a mission to go and get a couple of jerry cans and get them filled with fuel, but that done and the remaining fluids filled, the time came for the initial start.

Filling the coolant was helped by hand pumping the larger tubing to get it circulated around the system. Oil just needed 4.5 litres added through the top screw cap and petrol was simple enough, shoving around 17 litres into the tank.

Time to crank for oil pressure. The manual says this could take 30 seconds. It didn’t take anywhere near that long for me. Good pressure was present after around 5 seconds. A note on the immobiliser! It doesn’t mention this in the manual anywhere that I’ve seen! Essentially, use the LED on the dash as the main point of reference for what’s going on. Turn the key to position 2, so the dash lights up fully. If you don’t hear the fuel pump prime and the LED is manically flashing, then the immobiliser is still active. You need to put one of the immobiliser fobs next to the key barrel (where the immobiliser arial is wrapped around) and you should then hear the fuel pump start up. You can then press your starter button and everything should work…

Reconnecting the innertia switch and cranking for start this time. It took a while for everything to circulate through the engine but then it caught and was a sound to behold :) A lot of family were around for the big moment and it was great that everything went so well.

Later in the evening, I finished off one of the rear wings. Mostly because it meant I could take a picture that made the car look almost complete! A couple of the bolts are hard to get in place but other than that, it’s fiddly but fairly straight forward.