Well with my wife and daughter going trick or treating around the village, and me being left at home to answer the door to those that come calling for sweets, it is time to get back in the garage, and start fitting the roll cage...
Before she went i arranged for my wife to help me lift the cage into position and then set about fixing the cage in place. well that is easier said than done... firstly, it does not align perfectly... with the bolt holes, which meant some "engineering" of the bracket to open up the inside passenger hole in the roll cage bracket to let the bolt line up woth the thread. and the other problem... the rear diagnal part of the roll cage, which goes into the bracket in the boot... is twisted by about 2cm... and the bar will not move far enough to allow the bolt through into the second bracket hole... this one i have not yet solved. i have tried brut force, persuation and even talking nicely and not so nicely to it... at this point, it may be a "get the lads to help" job.. but for the main the roll cage is in place...

Today I have been playing with the harnesses, and seat... (I only have one seat).
The harnesses, dead easy, little bit of drilling, and a couple of bolts.. no problem, the Tillit seat however, that was another story..
Firstly tried to fit the seat into the car using the Pre drilled holes in teh lowered floor of the car... this turned out to be a mistake, after many moment of head scratching and confusing (and a lot of swearing), i called Caterham, and even sent thema picture of my soles in the flooe. Aparently they were incorrectly drilled. Bascially the holes were incorrectly drilled.
The distance between the front and rear seet securing holes for the funner (the larger holes in the floor) should have been 305mm (centre to centre), but mine were 325mm.
So after confirmation with Caterham on the distance and checking that the Rear holes were in the right place, and not the front ones, I marked the place where the new holes had to go.. surprisingly, there was a nice dob of green paint marking the same spot... i suspect someone had a little too much to drink when they did the holes in my floor plan... but i will say if this is the biggest mistake that has been made on the car, then this is going to be one fantastic car!!!

Well i have been playing with the assembly of the rear axle... nothing much to report here. it has gone rather smoothly... the only issue came when putting the left Caliper onto the rear disk, it wouldn't fit, because there wasnot enough gap betweenthe pads to slid the caliper over the disk.
In the end i had to call Caterham, and fortunately enough, the problem was not a major one. apparently the calipers piston can be screwed back (clockwise) using a special tool. or in my case (as per the discussion with Caterham's), you can place the caliper into a vice, and use a pair of thin nosed pliers to turn the piston head back and increase the clearance.

Well started to put in the differential today... and that has been a bit of a pig if i am honest..
Firstly the installation of the Dif is not easy on your own, so had to wait until the saturday to enlist the assistance of Darrell. The first obstacle was the fact that I have the new BMW Dif which is not the same instructions or fitting kits as those in the manual. so after some confusion and getting to grips with the various instructions we managed to get a plan of attack pm what we thought should be from teh manual, and what we thought should be from the seperate supplied instructions.
The instructions do state that you should instal the handbreak cable before the dif, we chose to do this later, which was not a problem to do after the Dif was installed.
We lifted the diff into place and through some difficulty we did get the lower bolts into location, the top bolt however was a nightmare to get into place. the top holes did not ligh up with the bracked and applying large forces to line it up was not a safe idea whilst working unde the car... so how did we get it installed?
With the long bolt mostly in place, the Differential still needed to be pulled towards the front of the car in order to allow the bolt to go into the left hand bracekt, to acheive this we needed to pull the dif forwards of the car, so we fashioned a Tornique, using some strong rope I tied it from the back of the Dif, to the A-Frame hole in the Chassis, and then put a strewdriver through the rope loop and turned it until it allowe the bolt to line up with the hole... simple (but did waist a lot of time getting to this solution)..

for the past couple of days, i have been playing with the hoses, engine wiring and exhaust installation. The only thing i can say here are that since this is an academy car, there is no heater, which means that the hose configuration is completely different (in theory simpler, but through having no guide to go by, also much more confusing).
In the end i called Sean at Caterham, and he supplied a few pictures of another Academy car which meant we had something to follow... so looking much better now.
Wiring was relatively easy.. there is only one way to do the wiring, the more interesting part is how to route and secure the wires from chaffing... that is more an issue as some connectors don’t have much movement, and therefore have little ways to get the wires secured in the best (and neatest) way. .
The exhaust was interesting, getting the 4 pipes through the holes... not much struggle there, getting the silencer in place... no not much struggler there either, but getting the springs onto the clips which secure the 4 outlet manifolds so the cat... nightmare...
When the spring loaded clips are pulled to their maximum length, this is only just good enough to get the clip hooks to the top of the hooks, not over them.. so in the end we used brute force to pull the clips to that position, and then a screwdriver through the clip to hook that over.. it took a few goes.. But got there in the end... the worst part was for the last one... as my wife and I had
been trying this one for about 25-20 minutes. We were determined to get this on.. And just as we got it to the closest position to hook over the end of the hook, the phone rang... so the question is .. Do you answer it or not....  ???

HELL NO... not until the clip is over the hook !!

Well i have managed to get the engine in, and the bolts went in for the engine mounting brackets, eventually after some persuasion with a lever and a little loosening of other engine mounting fixing bolts to get the difficult bolts lined up... also managed to get the gearbox central, through the use of a lever, and a small peace of  1" x 2" block of wood. Basically used the jack handle as a lever down the transmission tunnel (from within the car), until i could slide the block wood down the tunnel between the chassis and the gearbox... this seemed to make the gearbox align perfectly straight down the tunnel..
Happy days...

well i thought it would be a good idea to go and sepnd the weekend with the famliy, then a friend rang to say that he was free to help with the car if i had a need of him.... well who was i to turn down some assistance just as the engine needed to be dropped into the car..
Geoff, Andrew and myself set about putting the engine into the car... this would have been made simpler if the garage was larger, and the hoist had sufficient clearance to raise teh engine above the chassis... so we ended up dropping the car to the lowest setting on the axle stands, opening the garage door in order to lift the engine, and then manuvering the hoist and closing the door so that we could raise the engine and close the door for mximum clearance... not an easy process to work out... but it did work.. and we got the car above the engine.
Once the engine was over the bay it was reletively simple to lower the engine into the bay, although it was slow and deliberate in order to get the engine in without any scraping, or drama on the final location..... still all done, now just the mounting to line up with the bolts, and get the earbox into the tunnel centrally... (and that gearbox filler plug does look like a night mare clearance now it is in.. (cant even drill through the passanger foot well to get to it as tehre is a chassis member right over the filler plug... (ooooh well we will see when it comes time to fill the gearbox with oil).

Well another interesting day in the garage.... Gearbox and Engine assembly...
this was relatively simple process until you got to trying to align the gerbox and Engine... originally we tried to offer the gearbox up to the engine whilst the engine was on the hoist, mistake number one... it was impossible to put together, and we could not tell if it was the movelmen, angles, or just the splines not aligning... so we went back to what it said in the manual,,,, which did not work at first. we had several attempts to line it up, and without any rime or reason, we offered it one time and it went straight in... (persaverance if the name of that game (that and do what the manual says)
couple of other minor nuiances ... the starter motor bolts are not the same as the ones in the manual... and the starter motor bolt closest to teh engine has such little clearance it is very hard to get to with anything except an allen key...

Well finally started to do the build in earnest, The steering  rack is in, and the front suspension is attached.
This involved the location of the rack, and putting the bolts in (not difficult), except the manual says to put the washer on the side of the nut, and with the new rack clamp design it now has to go on the side of the nut. Minor, but makes sense if you have seen the  clamps (see pics). Also started to put on the upper and lower wishbones and suspension arms, This involved prepping the body work to protect during the build, and then locating the lower wishbones and then the upper ones. The only
confusing bit here is that the front Light bracket is not the same as that shown in the manual, so i called Paul at Caterham for some advice and he has forwarded some photo's of how to attach the front light bracket to the upper wishbones...

Next is to complete the right hand side of the wishbones and then to start on the fun stuff.... the engine prep !!!

Well the car has been sitting in my garage for a week, and without any TLC at all due to work. Luckily my friend Jim has arrived for the weekend and we have been through the boxes, the parts list and the manual in an attempt to check off the parts that ere delivered. (not an easy task). I also tried to contact Caterham today with a couple of questions on parts (or ones we were not are should / shouldn't be there), unfortunately Caterham build services do not work on the weekend, so this will have to wait till Monday.
I have published a few photo's of the checking process, we had to do it outside so my karate mats came in handy for laying on the floor so we could spread the parts out and check them off. If you are planning on checking the boxes that you get in your kit I recommend ordering some good weather and doing it outside if you can.