Bloopers

Although I have written this blog in an instruction style, there is plenty that went wrong and will keep going wrong. If you have any sort of issue with perfectionism building a caterham is the ultimate way to address this… you will repetitively break and generally cock things up, but somehow seem to recover later!

In no particular order :

• Got my face too close to a component I was spraying Holts rubber lubricant on – luckily I was wearing glasses as I nearly received a face full of spray. Keep face away from anything you are spraying, or use a mask if you can´t. Managed to do this twice for bonus points.
• When using the pry bar to loosen up the hooks on the back of the headlight stem, the pry bar slipped and my hand went flying into the table, nearly tearing off my thumbnail. To add insult to injury this was my right hand at 9:10am on a day off dedicated to the build! Use heavy duty gloves when applying force and extra care.
• When bolting on the front upper wishbone nut, despite multiple warnings I didn´t apply any masking tape to the car body. I very very slowly tightened the bolt, holding the nut in place. Dead chuffed with how this was working, I didnt register that the bolt had reached the nyloc portion of the nut. This then caused the nut to start rotating which scratched the car body. This is hidden by the nut but still annoying. Apply masking tape wherever you are working close to the car body.
• Got superglue on the front bodywork near upper wishbone holes because I hadn´t covered the body with masking tape.
• Spent 2 hours trying to get the front damper bolt out and reinserting by moving it behind the body – simply would not fit, before going in front of body
• Used so much force with a rubber mallet trying to install the front anti roll bar that I snapped one of the balls clean in two, while it was still in the socket. Also let the bracket drift to the edge while hammering and succeeded in scratching paint off the front.
• Spent 100 quid on a torque wrench that will go up to 300 Nm to do hub nuts, but only tightens clockwise. The LHS Hub has an anticlockwise thread. So I spent 100 quid on a wrench to do up one nut. Muppet!
• Correctly cleaned thread and fitted shoulder harnesses before fitting roll over bar. I figured access to bolts would be out by 1mm or so later. In a spectacular cock up, incorrectly followed page 148 – this has bolt – plate – thick spacer – mount, even though deep down it just didnt seem right. Had to go back later, remove bolts to get the mounting done properly. Naturally, one of the bolts wouldn´t come out (off by 1mm like the rest of the car!)… so I had to remove left damper, loosen roll over bar boss and invent an upward rubber mallet strike and bolt turn move to whip the bolt out. Was terrified I´d have to remove both dampers and the poor fitting rollover bar, which would have taken a few hours I reckon and probably more grinding!
• Cocked up the steering wheel bolt alignments
• Didn´t earth indicators – spent ages trying to work out why they weren´t working, mild panic attack that I would have to take apart the entire assembly to rectify it, before working out I needed to put the screw through the metal part!!