Phew. Got tired today! And threw a hissy fit off at dad – which wasn’t the best thing to do! Sorry about that! Still, another good day of progress. Today the engine went in. Not a lot else happened but that was still a good achievement.

Lowering the engine into the bay wasn’t too bad. It’s tight, but does just about fit. Getting the engine to sit onto the spline in the bell-housing was a bit of a pain but it eventually went home after a lot of jiggling and a slight adjustment to the angle of the gearbox.

The bolts listed in the manual for the engine mounts (the bolts that link to the engine block itself) appear to be wrong. However there are bolts in the same pack that are a good fit.

The bolt that goes into the starter motors are an absolute pig. There are 3 bolts. One went in and was torqued without too much problem. The topmost bolt was a fiddle and we got it in tight – but couldn’t torque. The inner most bolt was just impossible. We were able to get the bolt into the hole and turn it by fingertip perhaps 3 threads in before it got too stiff and we couldn’t then move it backwards or forwards. We tried all sorts of ways of getting to the bolt to tighten it, but it just wasn’t possible. Because this is now sitting half in, half out of the hole, I will have to let Caterham know and get them to tighten it in post build.

The other bolt that caused problems was the left hand engine mount bold that goes into the rubber bush that the engine sits on. The tool that we found yesterday at Halfords that fitted, was too large to get to the bolt once it was in position due to a chassis bracket being in the way. Might have to be an Amazon order for this one.

Other odd jobs done – we aligned and bolted the gearbox in; we attached the gear lever and reverse switch into the tunnel; we made a quick start on identifying and attaching the wiring looms between engine to car. This didn’t get very far as lots of the wires were not the same colour as described in the manual.

Really happy with progress so far. I now have a complete drive train in the car, so lots of the really heavy stuff is in place. Now begins the really fiddly, time-consuming parts of the build.