The overheating issue turned out to be a stuck stat. Rather than replace it, I was lucky enough to pick up a PRRT setup for nothing. I ordered an extra bit of hose and some new jubilee clips, and carefully drained the coolant in to a *very* clean bucket. I had to butcher a couple of nice silicone hoses, but at least they were found on the cheap too!

Butchering the stat was straight forward enough, using a hacksaw blade and a file made light work of that, and saved a useful tenner over buying a specific 'ring' to put back in the housing.

Everything went well apart from running dangerously low on jubilee clips, when some of them turned out to be made of cheese!

Thankfully no major dramas (for once) and I filled up the car with coolant. I only got a couple of litres in, but by this point was pretty bored of it all and came back to it the next day.

When I came back, all the coolant had disappeared to places it was meant to be! I put the rest of the coolant in, and allowed it to settle again. It appears to be self bleeding!

Firing up the engine found that it heated up and maintained a constant temperature of just above 80 degrees happily, but there was a slight leak from the radiator! It never rains...

Rather than give Caterham the satisfaction of buying a new radiator, I whipped out some big ol' pliers and gave the crimps a good squeeze. Time was tight so I didn't get to see if my efforts were effective or not, and I packed up for the day.

That was back in August 2011, and then I got married, went on honeymoon, moved house and started a new job so fast forward a few months and I'm back in the garage, armed with some new brake pads to replace the originals - some M1144s for the front, and standard for the back.

I filed a chamfer in to each pad, and scrubbed the discs with oven cleaner and emery cloth. Swapping the pads seemed quite straight forward - however, I wasn't certain if the notches on the rear pads and caliper lined up - it's not easy to see!

Next time I'm bleeding the system, I am definitely switching to flexible hoses at the rear - it's a nerve-wracking time trying not to bend or break the copper pipes!!!

I didn't bother bleeding the brakes this time, I will do them again once I've had a proper go with them, but the car is nearly ready for it's first MOT!

All that's left is fitting all the constituent parts of the Brooklands aero screens together and replacing the cracked windscreen for the test, and then it's off to the test centre for hoepfully an easy pass and a year of happy motoring!

Once that's done and I've enjoyed it a little bit, I want to get all the suspension components re-powdercoated, and the rear basket coated in POR15 - the quality of the powdercoat on such a young car is quite shocking, and flaking off left right and centre.

Nearly there!