Nigel B

Friday the 5th of July, we spotted a yellow SV (I think!) with two black stripes heading North across the Forth Bridge. Not a car I recognise from the Edinburgh area. It was a nice day to be heading towards the Highlands! 😎

There’s the nylon wedge designed to protect the bell housing, but I can’t see why you’d need to remove that to access the finger filter? (Is that what’s being implied?)

Six litres according to the owner’s manual of my 2017 car. I find it tends to spit half a litre or so into the catch tank, post oil change.

You have to drain the dry sump tank separately. There is a drain plug on the bottom of the tank, but received wisdom seems to suggest it’s better to use a suction pump to remove the oil from the tank as the thread on the tank’s drain hole is notoriously easily damaged. Here’s my method… 1) Jack up the front of the car, suck oil out of the dry sump tank (using a Pella pump in my case). 2) Remove the gauze finger filter from the the sump. (It’s behind a small, black, egg shaped cover towards the rear of the sump on the near side) Drain oil from finger filter hole, wash filter with a good spray of WD40 & replace. 3) Change the oil filter. 4) Add six litres of (expensive!) new oil, five in the dry sump tank & one via the engine oil filler cap. 5) Unplug the inertia switch on the bulkhead & disconnect the fuel injectors (possibly take the spark plugs out too, for easier cranking, although I don’t tend to bother). 6) Turn engine over on the starter until you see oil pressure on the gauge. 7) Reconnect the injectors & inertia switch & fire her up! I changed my oil & filter last week. It always seems to run a little bit sweeter afterwards, although perhaps that’s my imagination? Anyway, enjoy your first proper thrash!

Well done. I’m glad your persistence paid off. I bet that was a nervous ten minutes though!

Hi Bert, Sorry for my very belated reply, I should really look at the Blat/Tour section of Blatchat more often! I hope you have a fantastic time! I had a brilliant trip to Tuscany back in 2022, definitely memories to last a lifetime! Where are you staying? We stayed in Castellina in Chianti (we stay there for a week or two most years, in fact.) It’s a beautiful area, Florence & Siena are both spectacular. If you’d like a restaurant recommendation, I know a couple of fantastic, slightly out-of-the-way places. I remember speaking to an Italian Caterham owner online before the trip. If I remember correctly, he lived near San Marino, so not a million miles from Florence. We did discuss meeting up, but in the end it didn’t happen. Having done a bit of digging, his name is Antoine Decoccoiner. If you’re on Facebook, he’s a member of several of the Caterham Facebook groups. He seemed like a friendly chap & was up for a meet up. Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic trip! I’m envious. 😁

When I built my live axle Seven back in 2002 there were numerous parts missing, including the rear axle. Sorting out the cooling system was interesting, Caterham appeared to have simply thrown a random assortment of pipes from various different models into the box!

Hi Peter! You’d have hoped they’d have sorted out an appropriate replacement by now. I suppose the key thing is to ensure there’s no tension transferred to the outlet pipe (or is it the inlet pipe?). I hope you’re doing well. 👍

Was there not also an issue with the radiator top hose outlet being in a slightly different position to the previous design of radiator? But Caterham were still supplying the original design of top hose that now needed to be bent a little to fit the new radiator, adding to potential twisting stresses on the rad. It probably worth checking that it fits correctly. Or perhaps Caterham have now amended the design of the top hose?

They look like butterfly throttles to me. As other posters have said, it could well be a sticky throttle cable. When I had a VX Seven on carbs the cable would often get gunked up. A motorcycle ‘cable oiler’ was a useful tool for directing lubricant down the outer cable, it worked wonders.

In 2019 I part exchanged the live axle Seven I’d owned from new for an eighteen month old 420R. On the test drive at Caterham Gatwick I noticed that the brake pedal had far longer travel than my live axle car, with an uninspiring ‘mushy’ feel. I presumed the brakes just needed a good bleed, as that was how it felt to me. However, I replaced the fluid, using a Gunson Easybleed & my usual technique & the pedal felt exactly the same. I assumed I must have air in the system & I did a lot of research on Caterham-specific bleeding techniques & tips, but nothing I tried made any difference. I tried gravity bleeding, reverse bleeding, different brake fluids & all the methods you mentioned above, but the pedal always felt mushy & vague. In 2021 I had a set of throttle bodies fitted by Luke Stevens & the following month, I had the car set up by DPR. I asked them both for their opinion on my brake pedal feel & they both said the feel was good! DPR offered to fit a ‘high effort’ race spec brake pedal to reduce the travel & bingo! The short travel & positive feel I remembered from my live axle Seven was restored. I may be wrong, but perhaps that’s the answer?

That’s an interesting observation Graham & I’m glad it’s not just me who prefers the feel of the car with the rear ARB! Years ago, I had a couple of weeks off work. The first week, I visited my Dad, driving down from Scotland to the Midlands in the Caterham. The following week, we had a week away in the Highlands. We took my every day car, which was a Clio 172 at the time. On the drive north I was bemused by how ‘baggy’ the Clio felt, assuming my perception of it was down to the contrast with a week spent driving the Caterham. However, as the drive progressed, I started to feel there was a problem. When we arrived at our accommodation in the Cairngorms, I had a peek under the back of the Clio & discovered drops of oil, leaking from the rear near side damper. It felt very much as you describe. The problem was most noticeable on subtle dips or rises on the dual carriageway, where the car would momentarily feel ‘floaty’ & unsettled. I bit the bullet & replaced all the springs & dampers (with new, standard spec ones) & wow, what a difference that made! The car no longer felt under damped & as you describe, it would deal with & recover from lumps & bumps far more quickly.

Removing the rear ARB is such a common recommendation, but it’s one that I find puzzling. For the last few years, I’ve been playing around with the ARBs on my car, trying to hone the balance of grip, front to rear. I’ve tried most combinations, from fully stiff, to fully soft at both ends, including removing both bars (though I haven’t tried removing both bars at the same time). I’ve had a lot of fun trying the various combinations & I’ve learned a lot about how different settings affect the handling balance. I drive the car for a fair few miles after each change to try to really understand the pros & cons, not just for one blat. I feel that the increased sensitivity to the handling that I’ve developed as a result of trying different set ups has actually improved my driving. It’s something I’d recommend, although I do think you need to have a good basic set up (corner weights etc) before you start experimenting with the ARBs. On Blatchat, Pistonheads & the various Caterham Facebook groups, I’ve seen owners claim that removing the rear bar has ‘transformed the handling’. But when I tried removing my rear bar I really didn’t like the feel of the car at all. The increased roll at the back made it feel lethargic & considerably less agile. It was particularly noticeable when you wanted to change direction quickly, when negotiating a tight combination of left & right bends, for example. There was a pronounced sense of ‘waiting for the car to settle’ with the rear bar removed. I also felt the car’s tendency to ‘lift off oversteer’ was exacerbated to quite a degree. With a moderately stiff rear bar the ‘lift off oversteer’ tendency is pretty much eliminated. Although the ride quality was improved, I didn’t feel it was as ‘night & day’ as people claim & it certainly wasn’t a sufficient improvement to make up for the disadvantages. Perhaps different people focus on different aspects of a car’s handling? For me, a nice balance of grip between the front & the rear of the car is a key factor in how enjoyable it feels to drive. I wouldn’t want to adversely affect that in the pursuit of improved ride quality, particularly in a Caterham. Perhaps the answer is to seek out better surfaced roads?

The Goldfinger references mean I can’t resist posting up these!

Thank you all for your replies! I thought that might be the case, but I’m never sure about these things. I think I have a few bottles of distilled water lurking in the garage somewhere. And don’t worry Jonathan, I’ll avoid swigging it back!