Mike Bees

Increasing roll stiffness increases weight transfer to the outside wheel, hence the inside wheel is more likely to spin. Peter's setup is quite similar to what I found worked well at Goodwood the other week - 250/130 springs, Juno front ARB on full stiff and Caterham rear ARB on 3rd setting. My 'oddity' is that to cope with 15in wheels I'm running the rear radius arms in the upper position (too much roll-induced understeer on such tall wheels on the lower setting), which hitherto has made the car *very* keen to spin like a top on high-speed lift-off. The stiffer setting on the rear ARB seems to have tamed that trait, which is logical. IMHO it's too stiff for the hills & Curborough, but then corners at these venues are relatively slow. I'm a lot worse at Loton than I am at MIRA - I've only been to Loton once and there's a lot more to learn. 'Tis a wonderful hill. Mike

150lb is the current 'stock' Caterham front spring. Springs are generally available in 10lb increments. 250lb is a good choice. I wouldn't run the rear ARB on max stiffness - in the name of traction I tend to run with mine disconnected altogether for tight/twisty venues. See you at Loton! Mike

A bit late jumping in here, but regarding noise at Thruxton they have a limited number of days a year when they're allowed to be noisy. To 'buy' one of those I suspect you'd have to be very rich indeed. The rest of the time they're very strict on noise. Even a 'noisy' day at Goodwood would cause problems for a lot of 7s, sadly. Mike

Hethel could be considered an appropriate spiritual home for a 7 sprint, even though the 7 pre-dates Lotus' occupation of it. And it's a corker of a venue - lovely smooth interesting track with excellent viewing a few steps from the tarmac'ed paddock area. Mike

Yup. There's currently a very quick yellow Westfield (with a very quick driver - he was nigh on unbeatable even with his old Avenger engine...) running around with an Aldon-developed 1.7 Puma engine in it. Details are a bit shrouded but it's likely to be putting out over 210bhp on throttle bodies, which makes the 230 for a 1.6 on a plenum sound very impressive indeed. Mike

The 16v 1.6 Vx (Ecotec) engine is a totally different beast to the 8v lump, much smaller, much much lighter & more tuneable. Mike

"more likely due to the car being revved too high at some point in the past lossening the pin" Sounds like a load of old flannel to me. The similar-sounding 'classic' failure on the VVC is for one of the cambelt pulley bolts to either shear off or work loose (i.e. incorrectly tightened). This has been featured at some length on the MGF technical bulletin board, the URL for which escapes me right now. I believe I'm right in recalling that some MGF owners had their costs covered by Rover for this failure, but my memory could be faulty. Mike

It isn't that simple... There were quite a few breakages on the Academy cars with only 100bhp and wooden tyres. Mike

Nige, The ZF LSD is the old plate-type. Caterham reverted to these because (a) the race cars were lifting their inside wheel when kerb-hopping which causes the AP Suretrak to go "open" (putting big shock loads into the transmission when the wheel lands again), and (b) the supplies of the Suretrak dried up after AP dropped it (passed it over to another company IIRC). For all-round use I still reckon the Suretrak is a nicer bit of kit, barring the clunks & clanks. Mike

>> (and before we get into the debate sprints in the south east are few are far between and invites are hard to get as they can fill their events easily).

I've found that wear on the stock AP/VHPD/R500 (all the same thing) clutch is minimal. 2 full seasons of sprints & hillclimbs with tyre warming etc plus quite a few thousand road miles and the wear on the friction plate was almost immeasurable, despite the smells it sometimes gives off during the treatment. Mike

No!

If you can source an immobiliser unit (& plipper) then I *believe* (i.e. I've heard it said) that you can get a Rover dealer to match the the immobiliser to the ECU for a fee. Mike

Eh 🤔 I don't understand 😳

I've found Micheldever Tyres and/or Newdigate Tyres to be cheapest for Bridgestone in the past. Don't have their numbers to hand, but you should be able to get them from Yellow Pages or directory enquiries. Mike

Going from 2" to 2.5" made not a scrap of difference on my ~230bhp K, back to back tests measured on the rollers. The 2" is quieter... Oh sorry Lawrence, you said apart from me Mike

Don't by a 'competition cat' exhaust, just put your current can exhaust back on for the MOT. It's not that hard and you only have to do it once a year. Plus you keep the cat fresh, I suspect that track/competition use will shorten the cat life pretty significantly. I have a complete Caterham 4-1 competition exhaust kicking around which I could be persuaded to sell... Mike

Epoxy resin. Mike

The SLR 4-2-1 does not use the same primaries as the 4-1. But I'm suggesting that you could save a load of dosh by doing so and getting a 2-1 and can made up specially for the job. Mike

That doesn't look like a 'short' can to me. I suggested that an option is to add secondaries to the existing long primaries from the 4-1 (I've tried it on the rollers, it "works"), but that this doesn't leave room for much length of can, hence it'll be noisier than if you had room for a longer can... Mike

If you mean stock bits, then the whole caboodle - primaries, secondaries, collectors & silencer. If you mean a custom-job then you could get someone to make up some secondaries & collectors to fit your existing primaries (assuming they're the long ones which collect outside the bodywork), you'll also need a custom-made short silencer can which will be quite noisy. Mike

DaveJ wrote: "I would rather like know what spring rates I would be purchasing . If you didnt like the setup once it was on the car then how would you know which direction to go in ??" I agree Dave. Of course the advantage to the seller of being secretive is that if you don't like the setup then you your only option for improvement is to go back to the seller and spend more money... I can't for the life of me see why spring rates should be a closely guarded secret. We know what ball-park they will be in, and there's no way that there will be a 'magic' setting in that ball-park which is massively better than anything else in the ball-park. Mike

The Caterham-supplied low-back composite race seats were nowt to do with Tillett. Mike

Caterham modify all the K engines they use to take a Ford spigot bearing, which involves reaming the hole and pressing in a sleeve. Mike

Later versions have a stronger, but still cast iron, crank. Mike