caterhambuild

Horns first :

The horns should be in the box with the lights. Get them out and the relevant washer/bolt as per manual which for me was in Pack C.

Put the horn in a vice and very slightly loosen the bolt off to allow horn to spin on the spacer/mounting arm. Then bolt to chassis, making sure horns are not touching and the connectors are facing towards each other.

Front Brake hoses :

The brake hoses come in the same box as the suspension. Two bags will contain identical contents and the same width hose. A third bag will contain the rear brake hose, put this back in the box and lay out the contents of one front brake hose bag on the workbench.

You do not need the two thin washers or the slightly smaller adapter which are placed in the small bag in the picture above. Get the plain washer and shake proof washer (top right) from Pack A. Get the wider copper washer from the bag which comes in the uprights box.

Make sure that you use the copper washes from the upright box, these are slightly wider than the ones which are supplied in the small bags which come with the brake hoses. You also want to make sure you use the correct adapter – the below picture shows how you can tell which is the correct one

Use the adapter on the right, and the copper washer on the right. Best way to tell the difference is the ridge on the right adapter which is not present on the left. This ridge helps correctly seat the copper washer when you connect to the brake caliper. This will be a much snugger fit in the caliper as well, if you fit the adapter on the left it will move around a little.

Begin by fitting the adapter and copper washer to the brake caliper. Make sure that the washer is seated correctly (image on right) or you will lose brake fluid later! The image on the left below you can see the ridge still visible between the copper washer and the nut on the adapter – you do not want this.

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Now put the plain washer on the brake hose and thread through the hole in the bodywork. On the other side, add the shake proof washer and nut (the nut is 9/16¨ so use appropriate spanner) and tighten.

Once you have tightened this nut, attached brake hose to caliper

On the inside of the car you need to carefully screw the brake pipe onto the thread. It is easy to cross thread this as the brake pipe can be pointing at a different direction to the thread, you may need to bend the brake pipe slightly or loosen the nut on the adapter in the body to allow some wiggle room to get the brake pipe connected. Screw this up, then tighten all connections one last time.

Make sure that you check that you can do full lock on both sides on the steering and the brake hose does not foul on the suspension/dampers – if they do, you need to loosen the nuts holding the brake hose and twist it around.

Start by getting the rubber inserts into the ARB brackets by using some rubber lubricant to push them through.

Then put a small amount of rubber lubricant inside these inserts and slide them onto the ARB. Follow this by sliding on the dust covers (do not forget these!). Then put some threadlock on the ends of the ARB and screw on the balls.

You´ll notice that the balls don´t want to fit into the cups on the front upper wishbones. Many blogs at this point will use a dremel to strip away any excess powder coat. I did this a little bit on one side, but then decided to apply a brute force approach. Add bearing grease to the balls on the end of the ARB and into the cups on the front upper wishbone. Be careful not to put way too much into the cup as it will make the task harder.

Now slide both of the ARB mounting brackets (with the red rubber inserts) together into the middle of the ARB, as far away as possible from the car body. You want to avoid these moving as you deploy the trusty rubber mallet, if you aren´t careful these mounting brackets can drift to one side of the car and scratch the paintwork or even get stuck.

Site one of the balls into the cup and then use the rubber mallet from the front. The below image shows where to apply force with mallet. It helps to hold with your other hand somewhere near the middle while you do this, gently pushing the ARB in the direction of the cup that you are hammering into. It may take a fair amount of force but it will drop in eventually. If this doesn´t work you can use a dremel to strip off some powder coat.

Make sure the ball goes fully in, not just sitting on top of the cup or halfway in :

Then you need to get the other side located, grip the ARB and the upper wishbone and pull it into place as below :

Now again apply force to get the other side of the ARB into position.

You´ll note that as you are fitting the ARB you are cutting off access to the front upper wishbone front bolts, which still haven´t been torqued as we are going to wait until the car is on the ground. However, even with the ARB fitted into both upper wishbones, you´ll see that it can be pushed lower to give access to the bolts, which is what we will rely on later.

Push the mounting brackets both to either side and fit. Only tighten the bolts loosely for now as we will undo these later to allow access to the upper wishbone bolts. Be ccareful not to thread the brackets, the holes can be quite tight. I used some copper slip on the bolts as the holes did feel tight.

Once fitted, pack the cup with grease and fit the dust cover as shown below.

• Prepare headlights before fitting upper wishbone, so once the upper wishbone goes on you can fit the headlight.
• The supplied grommets are (in my opinion) not fit for purpose. They are too tight and it is a struggle to get cabling through them or to get them into place. Avoid wasting your time and pick up some grommets from amazon, I used some from that kit for both the headlight stem and the frame. I found a black tyre lever (used to change bike tyres) useful to maneuver the grommets into position without damaging any powder coating.
• When you first try to put the headlight stem on the car, the holes will not line up. This is because of the ¨hook¨ on the back of the stem. Use a pry bar to loosen this hook and you won´t need to drill or file anything.
• Test all bolts before attempting to do a final fit.
• I have the clear lens pack, but I am putting on indicators etc with coloured lens and will swap out after the car has passed IVA.

I used two excellent reference blogs for this step, Daniel French´s blog for the general construction of the headlights and also Caterham 420 detailed build blog for a few other points such as getting the stems to align and grommets.

Begin by prepping the bolts. Firstly, check that the holes are wide enough to allow the bolt through. Holding the stem at a 90 degree angle, check the bolt fits through the upper wishbone mounting holes and the headlight stem without issue. If it does not, file away any burrs or excess powder coat as before.

If the bolt fits put it to one side, and see what happens when you line up the headlight stem on the upper wishbone. You will most likely find that the holes do not align as documented on many blogs. To rectify this, you may need to loosen the hook on the back of the headlight stem using a pry bar. Use some duck tape on the pry bar to protect the paintwork, and then placing the headlight stem in a vice (I am using a trusty black and dekker work mate!), with something for protection, lever the hook up to create more space. Be very careful doing this, I nearly succeeded in removing a thumbnail when the pry bar slipped. It may require a fair amount of force. Apply some force, and then offer up to the upper wishbone mounting point again. By pushing the hook out, you will allow the headlight stem to move up so that the holes in the headlight stem can align with the holes for the upper wishbone.

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Keep doing this bit by bit until you can successfully mount the headlight stem (with the hook properly tucked underneath the mount) and slide the bolt through. It will take some time to do, but save a lot of frustration later on.

Grommets. The headlights require one grommet in the body work (where the wires will thread through to get into the car body) and one grommet in the oval hole in the headlight stem. The ones supplied by caterham are incredibly small and very shallow. The IVA (and general good practice) means that whenever you have wires meeting a metal hole, it is a good idea to put a grommet in place to protect the wires from chafing. You are welcome to try with the caterham supplied ones but I abandoned and used grommets from a separate set. The below pictures give an idea of the difference in grommet sizes.

Put one of these larger grommets into the upper wishbone mounting now. You may need a tyre lever to fully push it in, combined with getting your hand on the inside and making sure it is properly seated

1. Prepare indicator

Note that the indicator pods are handed, this is indicated by L or R, again this is from the driver perspective. Fit the indicator light onto the pod – make sure that the slight hole is at the bottom, this is for any water that gets in to drain out.

Remove the bulb, then screw the indicator light mount into the indicator pod with the three black self tapping screws. Note the copper metal tab in the 8 o clock position which protudes slightly. This is for the indicator earth. Make sure you put the screw on this hole through this tab, or the indicator wont work!

I do not have the carbon fibre indicator pod, I have seen others are provided with small bolts to do this. Once done insert the bulb and screw on the orange lens cover. Although I do have the clear lens pack, I am presenting the car to IVA with the standard coloured lens pack and will swap out to clear lens later.

Now apply 8cm of 8mm shrink wrap on the wires coming out of the indicator and apply heat using air gun. Once this has cooled, slide on 3cm of 13mm and 3cm of 10mm shrink wrap, but do not shrink this down yet.

2. Open up the headlight and install indicator earth.

Take the wires coming out of the headlight and pull off the caterham supplied plastic shielding. Thread these wires through in the following order – indicator pod, then mounting arm, then the washer and finally the nut. Tighten the nut finger tight.Put 5cm of 10mm shrink wrap on these wires coming from the headlight. Now take the wires coming from the indicator, and push the earth (black wire) up through the 5cm of shrink wrap, into the bottom of the headlamp and up into the headlamp itself. Undo the nut holding the existing earth for the main light, and add the earth from the indicator here. Note you do not need any loctite as there is a split washer.

3. Apply shrink wrap to cable

Now take 30cm of 10mm heat shrink and push the indicator wire and the headlight wires all the way through it to make a T junction as below.

Push the 5cm of heat shrink up into the headlight stem and make sure it is out of the way. Now apply heat using the heatgun to the 30cm of 10mm heat shrink until nice and tight.

Once this has cooled, pull the 5cm of 10mm heat shrink down from the headlight stem. Then push the wires all together and about 2cm up into the 5cm of heat shrink, before again applying heat to the full 5cm of heat shrink.

Once done, slide this up into the bottom of the headlight. In the headlight itself, you want to push the big fat grommet inside the headlight (not to be confused with the two smaller grommets) as far down as you can. It won´t go all the way. Then close up the headlight.

Once you have pushed up into the headlight, apply heat to the 10mm and 13mm heat shrink that is on the indicator and you should get the below.

4. Headlight stem

Now add the grommet onto the wire as shown in the picture above. Then you take all the wires and thread them gently through the headlight stem. Note this is very tricky to do – do not rush and take your time. Once you have pulled these through, it is time to get the grommet in place.

Making sure that you are using the grommet from the third party box, not the caterham supplied one, take a bike tyre lever (what you use to get the outer tube off when you change a bike tyre) and push the grommet into the headlight stem at the point which will be closest to the car body. In a very slow and gradual process, work your way around about 5mm at a time using the tyre lever to push this grommet into place. It will be quite hard at first and get easier. There is most room available on this headlight stem hole at the point closest to the headlight, so leave this bit until last to push into place. If required use some rubber lubricant, I did not use any.

You should now have a completed headlight stem. Repeat instructions for the other side. Once headlights are fully prepped, proceed with mounting the wishbones.

Notes

• I have the SV / ¨Wide Track¨ which has slightly different fixings.
• EDIT : You may want to take this opportunity to remove the brake pads from the uprights and apply some copperslip to the back of them (similar to what is done later with rear brake pads). I don’t know how to do this, and I didn’t do this myself during my build … and spent the first 600 miles squeaking my way through towns at slow speed!! I asked for it to be rectified at the 3 month/1000 mile service and Caterham sorted it out.

Below picture shows laying out of nuts and spacers for SV upright mounting.

The nuts on the right hand side are 1/2¨ nuts. The top nuts, with the red line through them, are full height nuts. Discard these as you do not use them on the SV uprights, due to the spacers involved. The lower nuts are half height nuts. You get two of these nuts in Pack A. You should replace the two full height nuts (with the red line through them) with two additional half height nuts (identical to the bottom two in the photo) which are in a loose, unmarked pack which is included in the box that contains the uprights. Keep this pack handy – it also contains some large copper washers that you need for installing the front brake lines. So in all you should be using a total of four half height nuts to install both uprights. One nut will be used to secure the wingstay, one nut will be used for the main lower upright bolt to secure to the bottom wishbone.

The spacers on the left hand side are used to help secure the lower upright bolt. The spacer at the top is a ´top hat´ spacer. This is to be inserted underneath the lower wishbone. The ´ring spacer´ at the bottom is to be slid onto the lower upright bolt – note it only goes on one way, so do not force it.

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Lower the main lower upright bolt into place slowly, being careful not to knock out the top hat spacer which was inserted below. Loosely put one of the 1/2in nyloc nuts on the bottom of this to help hold in place and ratchet a few turns while holding the upright.

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On the steering track rod end, remove the attached nut and discard the black plastic protective cap.

Place the steering track rod end bolt into position at the front and again ratchet this up a few turns. This will help stop the upright swinging around too much. Tighten both nuts up with a ratchet, but do not torque them yet. You may find that the bolt spins when you try to do up the nyloc nut on the steering track rod end – if this happens apply a little bit of weight from above which should help stop it from spinning. Now ratchet the above two nuts finger tight.

You now need to remove the nut and washer on the back of the upright main axle nut. This can be quite hard, I ended up using a 1/2in breaker bar with 19mm socket. Hold on to the upright as you do this to avoid any damage.

Discard both the nut that you have just loosened and the washer.

Now take out the wingstay (make sure it is the correct one for the side you are working on, they are marked RHS and LHS on the labels on the bags) and slide onto this bolt, before ratcheting not quite finger tight with the other 1/2in nyloc nut. You want to have a little bit of give left as you need to get the upper wishbone ball joint to fit thru the top of the upright.

Now place the jack underneath the lower wishbone and gently jack up to help push the upright upwards. You may need to loosen the bolts holding the upper wishbone very slightly to allow it to move downwards. The objective is to get that upper wishbone bolt through the top of the upright and wingstay.

Once you have the bolt through as in picture above, you use the plain gold nut shown in the photo at the beginning of this post and tighten with a 22mm spanner. You may also need to use a 6mm allen key in the bottom of the bolt to stop it from spinning. Alternatively, try applying pressure from above which can also help stop any spinning. Keep tightening this bolt and it will pull the upper wishbone ball joint down onto the upright

Once this has been done, undo the gold nut and place the nyloc nut which you removed from the upper ball joint earlier back onto the thread. Tighten up. You may experience some thread spinning. I used a spanner with an allen key secured in the bottom of the bolt, once I got the thread fully engaged with the nyloc, you can lower the jack slightly and this may help stop the thread spinning so you can tighten up the nut using a ratchet.

Now make sure all nuts are done up finger tight and that there is no play in the upright, before torquing all nuts and removing jack. Torque to the values given in the new manual. The new manual is missing torque for track rod end – use 34 Nm from old manual.

Upright should now be finished. The manual talks about drilling a hole through the wingstay for the ground on the indicator – do this later.

Notes

• The bottom of the damper is easy
• The top is difficult. You probably won´t be able to get the bolt out, the bodywork will get in the way. The solution is to move the bodywork out of the way. Some blogs will bring the bolt out on the inside of the body, pushing outwards to create room. This didn´t work for me. I had to push inwards from the outside of the body and pull the bolt out on the outside.
• You will probably be surprised by how much the skin can flex. Try not to push too hard.
• I decided to do the bottom of the damper first to prevent it moving around so much and given the top is so much trickier. A jack is used to help support the weight.

This job is a lot easier with two bespoke tools involving a 6mm allen key. Take a 6mm Ball Head Allen Key that you can butcher. Cut down the allen key at the top so it is narrower than normal. Then cut off the ball head part with maybe 10mm of space. This can be used in a 6mm socket to help torque the top suspension bolt later.

The suspension box has four dampers in there, two for front and two for rear. The front dampers are the smaller ones. You will also require four sleeves, two for each damper. These are in the bag in the damper box. Don´t forget the split washer which is in pack A, this is only required on the top of the damper.

First, apply copper slip to both sleeves and insert into the upper and lower damper as shown.

Now you need to remove the caphead bolts which are in the lower wishbone and the upper damper mounting point. Removing the bolt from the lower wishbone is very easy using a 6mm allen key. As described above removing the upper bolt is very difficult. This picture gives you an idea of alignment

The only way you are going to get this out is by either pushing the car body outwards, and pulling the bolt out inside the car (I tried this and failed), or by pushing the car body inwards and removing the bolt on the outside of car (which is apparently easier and what I did). Make sure you apply some masking tape to protect the car body work.

Once you have both bolts out, apply copperslip to the bottom bolt, and place the split washer on the top bolt so you don´t forget it later

Loosen the bolts holding the lower wishbone very slightly so that it droops a bit lower, make sure you have the trolley jack in position at the outside of the lower wishbone to support the weight. Now pass the damper up through the bottom of the wishbone and get the bottom of the damper into position. Insert the caphead bolt which has been covered in copper slip into the bottom of the wishbone and do this up finger tight using a 6mm allen key.

Get the top damper into position, you may need to pump the jack slightly to help slide it in. Use an allen key to help get it aligned. It should be fairly stable in the mounting point as it is quite a tight fit. Be careful with the split washer that you don´t get it trapped against the car body causing damage.

Once this has been fully tightened, torque the bottom caphead bolt to 25Nm. This should be fairly easy. Then on the top caphead bolt, use a wobble bar on the torque wrench, combined with the miniature Ball Head allen key that was cut earlier to torque the top bolt.