caterhambuild

Before attaching the nose cone, make sure everything from the front of the car to the engine is proper and tidy – all wires zip tied and secured. The nose cone will block access and it can be a bit fiddly to get it on and off, so ideally you only want to do it once.

You may find that your nose cone comes with the badge pre-fitted, so this is just a matter of adding the nose cone onto the car. Make sure you apply some masking tape to the body as it can scratch the car as you put it on.

The nose cone is secured to the car using special fasteners, which are attached to the nose cone themselves. There are four in total, two at the bottom at the front, and one on each side at the top where the nose cone meets the bonnet. The nose cone sits on the outside of the mounts on the car. You then tighten up the screw that you can see in picture above and it engages the wire in the mount to hold in place.

Lift nose cone into place, secure fasteners. This is how they look from inside, see how it engages the wire :

Now apply supplied foam to edge of nose cone – where the nose cone meets the bonnet. The bonnet will rest on top of this foam.

Now move on to the bonnet – start by prepping and attach foam to underside of bonnet. Before fitting the bonnet, again do a final check of the engine bay and make sure everything is properly secured and IVA ready (although bonnet easy to take off later). Apply a nut cover on the starter motor as per the IVA manual.

Bonnet on – easiest with two people but you can do it solo. The hardest part is around the air intake – easiest to get the bonnet under this intake first and then place it down. Do up clips.

It looks like a car now :

The car is now done. It will need to go through a PBC (Post Build Check) where Caterham, or your dealer (Williams Automobiles for me), check the car over to make sure it is safe , and then an IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval) which is a government test carried out at an approved test center – there are multiple sites throughout the UK. Note you can present for IVA, or your dealer. I chose not to do this as I describe below. After an IVA pass, another few weeks of paperwork are needed to get the car fully registered, then it is ready to drive!

The only tasks left now are some small IVA preps. If you have followed the blog so far, you will most likely have covered the bulk of these already. There are a few extra things needed.

The Caterham IVA checklist is on the references page of this website. Print that out and go round the car checking everything off.

IVA checklist items not yet covered in blog, do at this point :

Nut cover on starter motor (no pic)

Apply trim to spare steering wheel mount on passenger side underneath the dash:

Apply scuttle trim to scuttle. Good idea to open up the scuttle trim a little with a screwdriver before you push it on (see airbox)

Apply scuttle trim to exhaust (and trim excess)

Apply scuttle trim and nut cover to exhaust mounting bracket

Apply clear tubing to prongs on exhaust

Apply nut covers to front suspension (Not all shown in these pictures)

In the above picture, note the other white penned bolt on the upright needs a nut cover (the bolt is approx 5-6cm to the left of the wingstay securing bolt. I used a glue gun to hold the nut cover to this, as none of the supplied covers would fit.

Boot on rear upper arm, secured with zip tie (similar to boot on ARB)

Secure tyre goo in boot

The bonnet also needs rubber covers adding to the catches, front and rear

Follow full Caterham IVA checklist and tick everything off as you go to verify. Please do not treat my list as exhaustive.

Note – I actually decided to duck out of the IVA myself. Everyone has different things that they like and dislike. The IVA just doesn´t sound like it fits my personality very well. It sounds like a largely box ticking exercise, which from prior experience (a large part of a former job) I know I absolutely hate. As this is supposed to be a fun project for me, I am getting the dealer that I bought the car from to take it to IVA for me after they have completed the Post Build Check. However, it is being presented by me to the garage largely IVA compliant. Williams, the dealer, will do some final IVA prep steps – such as removing the detachable steering wheel and replacing with an IVA compliant one. They collect the car from my house and dropped it back off when done using a covered trailer :

Take the opportunity now to go round underneath the car while it is still up on the mobile axle stands and touch up any scuffs or scratches to the chassis with black hammerite paint. This will help with weather protection. Note you can also get touch up paint for the bodywork from Caterham parts in the stock colours, this comes in a bottle with a brush on the cap (similar to nail varnish). Touch up any scratches or nicks in the paintwork also.

The wheels come with stickers attached to them. Remove these stickers and you can use a bit of WD40 or similar to get the residue off if you so wish.

Rear Hub Nuts

To torque up the rear hub nuts, the centre caps need to come off the rear wheels. This allows access to the nuts.

You can prize these centre caps off from the front of the wheel, with a screw driver, but I found a lot easier and less damaging to just knock them out from behind, while the wheel is not attached to the car. You can do this using a pin punch and some very gentle taps from the hammer.

Once you have both caps off, put the rear wheels on the car. Note wheels have a direction, make sure the arrows on the side are pointing forward.

When you put the wheels on, always start threading the nuts on by hand before applying more force at the end. Don´t try to torque until car is on the floor. Put the front wheels on also, again making sure the correct wheel is on the correct side.

Now lower the car to the floor, back first then front. Chock all four wheels with bricks or similar, and fully apply hand brake.

Now using the torque adapter, torque up the rear nuts to 270Nm. I used a breaker bar. The adapter is quite intuitive to use and the manual covers everything you need to know, just be careful not to slip as it is a lot of force!

Once the nuts are torqued up, reattach the centre caps – a gentle tap from the rubber mallet helps, and torque the wheel nuts to 85Nm on the back. Don´t bother torquing front wheel nuts yet as those will come off doing the front wings.

Front Suspension

Back when fitting front suspension, the manual says to wait until it is bearing weight before torquing up. That seemed an age ago then! At the time I was worried about access issues with the ARB, but this is possible.

Lower front bolts are dead easy for access. Torque to 81Nm.

Lower rear bolts are a bit trickier, but you can still get in fine. Just make sure you don´t slip as your hands are inside the engine bay. Again, torque to 81Nm.

To access the top headlight bolt, which the Anti Roll Bar is obstructing – remove bolts holding ARB in position :

Push ARB down gently (leaving ARB in its cups) – it helps to have someone else who can hold the ARB down. You can now fit a 3/8in Halfords Advanced 17mm short socket on a short 3/8in wobble bar and torque up to 47Nm.

Be careful with paint on the rear spanner, you may need to use the open end of spanner to hold nut in place. As always careful not to slip and protect the headlights.

Once this is done, push the ARB back up into position, being careful not to thread bolts as you reinsert then from behind into the bracket. Then torque the ARB bolts to 20Nm.

Now the upper rear bolts – access is tricky, but possible by using the Halfords Advanced 1/2in torque wrench, with a 1/2in -> 3/8in adapter and a 3/8in. 17mm short socket. Again, torque this to 47Nm.

IVA Trim and Repeaters

Start by dry fitting IVA trim the whole way around the front wing. Have the join, where the two ends of trim meet, on the opposite side to the holes that are pre-drilled in the front wing for the side repeater.

There are three pre-drilled holes on the side of the wing – these face outwards from the car and are for the side repeater. Cover the three holes with masking tape, before using a 14mm drill bit to enlarge the middle hole so that the side repeater can fit. Careful – repeaters are handed. Look closely at the repeater itself and you will notice it is not symmetrical. Make sure that the lights on the repeater are facing backwards, double check you have the right side!

Now use superglue to fit IVA trim all the way around the front wings. Use a dab every 2-3 cm. Lift up the IVA trim on the inside and dab with superglue. Secure with clothes pegs to allow it to set. While doing this, apply about 20cm of heatshrink 4mm 2:1 to the green repeater wire – much easier access now. Once the superglue has dried, fit the repeater to the wing and zip tie cables loosely out of the way for now.

Prep The Wingstay

Use a 1/8in HSS drill bit to drill approx 5-10mm in from the end of the wingstay tubing as per manual – drill down from the top. This is for the repeater earth.

The wing is attached to the wingstay using a super strong bonding agent called Teroson. This should be included with the kit. To maximise the bonding, best to remove the powder coat where the wing will meet the wingstay, and then score it thoroughly with a file. This creates a nice surface for the bonding agent to work into.

Start by using the Dremel to remove powder coating from the top. You can protect the surrounding area from debris by pushing a bin sack over the wingstay as in this picture. That way nothing is going to get in the brakes etc.

Once done, then score with a file.

Repeat this for all other wingstays. Make sure it is the contact point that you are filing – especially on the rear prongs of the wingstay (contact point there is not just on top of the wingstay.)

Perfect Positioning and Practice

Now put the wing on top of the upright and check if it is level. It may be off very slightly, this is ok as the glue will compensate a little. If it is off severely, try to level it out – jam a screwdriver underneath and give it a good whack with the hammer – I only needed to do this for one prong.

Once you have the wing level, use a ruler to measure the distance from front of the wing to the front tube on the upright. This should be around 75mm to 80mm. The key here is that for the IVA, the front of the wing is ahead of the wheel (ie the alloy wheel), but behind the front of the tyre, when you look at it from the side.

Once you are confident on positioning, get pieces of masking tape and attach to the wingstay and the wing where they meet, and mark positioning with a pencil.

Use this opportunity to practice putting the wing on and off. As well as the front – back positioning being correct, you´re looking to have the left/right positioning correct as well. You want fingers to fit down both sides, and when you look down from above you don´t want to see the wing on at a strange angle. Get comfortable taking the wing on and off the wingstay now while there´s no glue present!!

Finally, mark on the underside of the wing the rough area where the wingstay meets with the wing and sand this (wear your mask obviously), this again will aid with adhesion.

Fit The Wings

Now jack up the front of the car if not already done, leaving the wheels on, and put some axle stands in position for safety. Fit one wing at a time – ie apply glue and then fit the wing and tape, before moving on to the other wing. Lay out the correct wing on the correct side before you start using glue.

Take the Teroson and push the bottom in with a screwdriver.

The top of the tube needs opening, then attach the long plastic head and use a Stanley knife to cut about 5mm off the end, so you get decent width bead on the glue you´re going to squeeze out.

Now start on one side and apply a nice fat bead to the top of the wingstay.

Same on the rear prong, note slight angle for best contact point.

Once you have applied the Teroson, bring over the wing (triple checking the repeater is on the outside!) and lining up the tape you already applied as a guide, press down just as you practiced. Make sure that the wiring is hanging out of the way – you don´t want to glue this. Again, make sure you apply the wing at the correct angle, looking down from the top as well. Should be able to fit a finger underneath on each side between wing and wheel. No need to press mega hard, but hard enough. Put the spirit level on top to check the wing is still level. Then take masking tape, and wrap around 4-5 times. In doing this, careful you don´t dislodge the wing.

Take a breath… stand back and make sure it looks OK, then repeat on the other side.

Apply some insulation tape to the end of the Teroson to help prevent it drying out, and come back in at least 24 hours for the next part. I ended up leaving both wings taped for 48 hours.

Improve The Bonding

When you come back, start by removing the masking tape and give both the wings a nudge. They shouldn´t budge at all. Now time to shore up this bond, by applying a load of Teroson underneath.

Remove the front wheels, cover both the front disks with bin bags with some roll over the top – you don´t want any of this stuff dripping onto your brakes! Also place paper towels on the floor, as you don´t want this getting on floor either. (If it does, WD40 is solvent so use that to remove.) Sling the wire up over the wing as well to keep it out of the way.

Now underneath the wing, apply masking tape on either side of the wingstays on both sides, this helps get a crisp line. Get your box of latex gloves nearby, a bin and a load of spare tissue, the next part can get a bit messy.

Once both sides are prepared and ready, get the Teroson out again. You will probably need to use the Stanley knife to cut the end of the nozzle off. Now put two fat beads down either side of each stay on the upright, and one or two fat beads along the top. Wearing latex gloves (i doubled up, don´t want this on your skin) and eye protection, spray a little bit of WD40 on top of the Teroson and then begin smoothing this with your finger. You may be surprised how well the WD40 works as a solvent, I was.

Smooth it over using the gloved finger, get it nice and smooth. The WD40 may drip a bit onto the towels on the floor. Once there´s not much more dripping, remove the masking tape (Don´t leave the making tape til the glue sets, itll be a right mess!). Repeat for the other three joins. Keep an eye out and be ready to mop up any final drips. When doing the front of the wingstays, be careful you don´t cover up the hole which is going to be used for the repeater earth!

Again, leave for 24-48 hours to set. You should now have wings bonded to the wing stays.