Jim 123

Given the very nature of the cars, as well as Caterham Cars onerous legal obligations; do we know if CC issue cautionary warnings or disclaimers about using their Standard Roll Bar installation on Track Days? I'd guess that Graham MacDonald and his people have given some though to their Standard design being fit for purpose.

Has anybody experienced an insurer requesting increased premium, or higher policy excess, based on whether a Standard or FIA Bar is fitted to your Caterham?

James, re #45 I stand corrected, I now know that there is an Association of Track Day Organisers. However having visited their website, I can see zero evidence of any, as I stated, "industry standard" relating to roll bars. Which is the point I was trying to contribute earlier in an unwelcome effort to distill noise out of this thread. (Let's not get further off topic with a debate around what you mention in #45 as "accepted practice" which is something different). Thanks for your suggestion that I attend one of your Track Days to experience the "rather distinctive Club atmosphere." I'll do that, I'm pretty convinced it will more than align with my evolving expectations.

Clive as I understand it, the diagonally braced latest bar is not an FIA roll bar unless it has an homologation certificate attached to it. The self adhesive homologation certificate is not supplied by Caterham when you take delivery of the roll bar / vehicle, but it can be purchased retrospectively from the parts supplier for £25. To also add my own experience, maybe a one off, but there can be very significant manufacturing variances between new supply FIA bars. I have received a bar with a certificate that I flatly refused to fit. This whole thing is a bag of worms, I think we need to all work with the MT to understand all of the issues.

A couple of comments that may or may not be helpful. Regarding the term "industry standard" which is being argued in this thread by those who are both pro and non-pro the roll bar change proposal. I think this is maybe a bit misleading in terms of any L7C decision. As far as I know there is not a "Track Day Industry", it is a number of apparently unconnected race track based entertainment providers. There is no collective self regulation of these entertainment providers (I am not criticising them). There is no trade body, and no published minimum standards. Regarding self scruitineering, last year at Combe on a non-L7C track day I saw a Thrifty Van Rental VW Caddy giving it some welly. The load area behind the driver and passenger had some rather solid unrestrained objects of cargo.

Paul, a dumb question but have you managed to get a copy of the build manual? Just in case nobody has mentioned this to you.

Andrew IMO your idea sounds to me worthy of keeping open for any cost / benefit study in future. My fingers remain crossed that our MT can come up with something that feasibly satisfies the expectations of the membership.

I think Andrew's efforts to bring the various comments on this topic under one new discussion is quite praiseworthy. I am really non-aligned on this subject, but Andrew's work prompted me to seek out and read all of the Trackday Documents on this site. I was surprised on what I have learned. I was interested to see that the Trackday Documents, including the (quite detailed) Roll Bars and Indemnity Disclaimer are the published property of Seven Club Ltd which is a smaller group of MT participants. Let's not get back into a debate about the ultimate legal entity, but I believe there is an important distinction to be shared. Our Club has a large Management Team, but only 4 of the MT are legally bound Company Directors of Seven Club Ltd. Our 4 Directors are non-salaried volunteer, but they carry clear liabilities whilst they are listed as active at Companies House. Any change in Roll Bar policy really must boil down to whether or not all of our 4 volunteer Directors will be comfortable about volunteering to be targets for increased possibility of litigation being directed at themselves. The good old days of Ltd Company Directors being legal escape artists are long gone. Based on our well published current position on Track Day Roll Bars, I would not take any of the 4 Directors places on the Companies House Register unless any change for Roll Bars on Track Days was backed by clear proof of increasing participant safety. This is a bit long winded. However, I think we need to be very sensitive to the personal position that we might be demanding our MT to adopt before we resort to beating them up for what they have inherited.

Speedtrip try this link on pedal adjustment which hopefully you will find useful: http://www.sevenracing.co.uk/Caterham_Build_Diary/Entries/2012/12/28_Setting_the_driving_position_and_pedals.html Tom / Smiiffy I'm sure that the the electrical connector will work fine. If I could make a comment which you may want to consdier as I went down this road before,. The connector is brass (i.e. soft) and designed to clamp copper wire (soft). It is also intended to hold the copper wire in static applications. Remeber that your throttle cable is stainless steel (hard) and will be acting in a sheer plane relative to the brass connector, so it might be worth adding a "tighness check" to your service schedules to avert unplanned pit stops.

Chris with my build I was not too comfortable about bending the pedal end especially as the new position looked like it would encourage the cable to fray over time. As an alternative I came up with the above which passed the IVA without any issue.

Tom if you snip the end of the cable inside the pedal box to remove the sweated on cable end fixing, you should find that there is a hole drilled in the top of the throttle arm which your throttle cable can now pass through. A couple ot theses Go Kart thingies (as per link below) fitted where the cable passes through the throttle arm should enable slack to be eliminated. https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/322292474039?chn=ps&adgroupid=43106429403&rlsatarget=pla-434446043927&abcId=1128926&adtype=pla&merchantid=101723126&poi=&googleloc=1006622&device=c&campaignid=857233083&crdt=0

Re the oil filter sheared bolt, there was a post in late November mentioning Irwin Bolt Removal tools. Never used one myself, and you may not have enough of the bolt sitting proud of the block for these to work. Lots of soaking with plus gas as you no doubt have tried. If you do have to resort to drilling it may be safer to see if you can make up a jig using an old oil filter base housing with some mods to guide your drill bit when making the pilot hole. With the crank bolt is it worth trying an electric impact gun from your local tool hire shop? Best of luck.

A little off topic, but does anyone know if an off the shelf OBD to USB cable works with Easimap?

An interesting dinner table topic. PlastiDip is one of these products that does not allow you to polish out any imperfections or remove air-borne contamination from the spraying process. On something the size of clamshell wings etc I'd envisage it would be "challenging" to get a constant spray pressure, spray fan pattern, and film build, with an aerosol. This would undermine lay down and appearance esp. with an aluminium effect. You will possibly need to get access to pressure fed spray equipment. However, it might be worth a DIY experiment, as this stuff is supposed to peel off easily. Cleaning requires special products from what I recall. If you tried PlastiDip on a test piece, you could stick that on the roof rack of a car for a few weeks and see how it performs against environmental pollutants and also how it cleans up.

Hopefully it will remain unused with some luck.

A great tip Brian. I personally was not aware of Irwin products.

Tom I think the challenge here is that the 911 has steel hex bolts fixing the manifolds into the alloy heads, and not the more sensible stud and nut configuration. Ian, from your earlier descriptions of the condition of the bolts, and just to speculatively add to your ideas pot..... To get the initial purchase to loosen the bolts, the main resistance is likely to be from the corrosion formed between the steel bolt heads, steel washers and the steel manifolds (esp as the more exposed fixings will be exposed to road crud). Taking Tom's idea as a basis, is it worth looking for a way to split / shift the washers a miniscule bit to encourage sheer slippage in the corrosive layer that they are sandwiched into between the bolts and the manifolds? Working from underneath, without the luxury of a ramp, and with lousy access to the bolts on the inner pots, this is not a panacea, but might work with a couple of bolts.

Bearing in mind Duncan's point, have you heard of 996 manifold bolts failing if left in situ as long as the manifolds are not in need of replacement? As I guess you know, this is a job with a reputation for the bolts shearing, and gravity is working against penetrating oil doing its best. Disconnecting the the silencer boxes first will alleviate stress on the manifolds to some extent.The inner cylinder bolts on each bank can pretty difficult to access with a good socket fit. I'd ponder before applying heat, as my thinking is that the mass of metal in the manifold flange will expand (i.e. thicken) with heat, and make the bolt heads more grippy. As Jonathan says lots of "real stuff" penetrating oil and lots of soakings. Proper impact driver and eternal patience with each bolt. Best of luck.

Mhsalem, I'd suspect that your call to go the wrapping route might be sound. That way you won't get clobbered with having to undo a well intentioned paint attempt that does not deliver. Metal-like finishes are not feasible in mainstream OEM painting because of their significant complexity; the need for special clean-room environments; and eye watteringly high reject rates. Next time you do the school run, have a look at the other parents R Royce Phantoms with Stainless Steel Bonnets. You can then figure out how come the whole car is not painted the same. The attached link explains how to achieve this on your 7, and also keep your car looking OK. https://www.glasurit.com/sites/glasurit.com/files/downloads/si_008_rolls_royce_repair_process_05_2011_uk.pdf

With your budget in mind I felt it may be worth mentioning that there could be a few things to consider if you were to remove the rear wings, clamshells and nosecone yourself before painting. I hope the following is helpful in your search for optimum price and quality regardless of how you go forward. Bear in mind that you will have to build-up quite a thickness of primer, colour and cleacoat to cover the existing Green paint, plus get a flat aluminium-like appearance. This is esp. difficult on hard internal right angled edges where one surface has not to be painted, but the paintable surfaces will have to be sanded right into the edges to provide a key for the new paint without damaging your ally body. This is likely to be difficult where the fiberglass mates to the ally bodysides. You could end up with an ugly / unsound finish at the interfaces along the body. Even spending on labour cost to remove sanding residue, I'd bet that you will still end up with some remaining sanding particles finding themselves flying loose and embedding into the wet horizontal painted surface during application of various paint layers. With the wings etc left in place, you will have also to cop for non-value adding labour costs to mask between fiberglass and ally, and ditto to cover the rest of your 7 from overspray, and then de-mask. You may find lower labour rates, and less chargeable time content, if you approach outfits that do motorbike customisation / jobbers handling specialist parts paintwork. Many of these have clean-room spray facilities that are geared to handle your type work if customers deliver the parts. Their spray booths are smaller, and they don't have the floorplan overheads needed to park up, prep, spray, and oven bake, a weeks worth of full sized cars.

I'd say that the existing parts should be paintable, but you might struggle to get something that looks a good match to the existing ally. As you will be looking to spray in a metallic effect you will need a layer of clearcoat on top. I would suggest a matt clearcoat as gloss finish clear over silver will not look like ally.

What is the level (cold) in the header tank that you are topping up to? Is the "bubbling" you saw in the header tank coming from the coolant flowing from the return pipe that feeds back into the tank at the top?

Have you looked at DIY windscreen chip repair kits on eBay?

Is it worth exploring if a later spec replacement bonnet is a good way out if you keep the nose?

Probably not helpful but I had a low speed rattle from the O/S rear that used car to come and go. Turned out to be the Half Hood fixing strap hitting the fuel filler pipe cover when my hood was not in use.