Caterham Blog
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Build Session 5 : Front Suspension 2
It’s Saturday and I was hoping to get a good day’s build in – guess what… didn’t quite go that way. I didn’t get up as early as I was hoping and so didn’t get into the garage until around 11AM. The first task however was a trip to B&Q (Lowes equivalent for our US…
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Build Session 4 : Front Suspension 1
It had been a busy week at work and I hadn’t had a chance to get on with the car other than 20 minutes to look at the poorly threaded harness mount yesterday. Today is a Friday and a work day… and after sorting out all my morning emails I found a couple of hours…
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Build Session 3 : Tapping a Poorly Threaded Harness Mount
A simple job today… when the car arrived there was an obvious problem with the inboard off side harness bolt. The car is set up for 4-point harnesses and it now seems that Caterham, not only pre-attach the hood and the boot cover, they also pre-drill and set up the attachment points for the harnesses.…
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Delivery 1 : Shortages Box
After speaking with Derek Howlett yesterday, Monday, he shipped the missing shortages box by courier. I had given Derek my work address and the delivery arrived at 8:42 today, Tuesday. We opened the box while I was at work and found: N/S and O/S, upper and lower, wishbones Pair of De Dion Ears Pair of…
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Email 1 – Caterham (Derek) : Shortages, Bellhousing and IVA Trim Questions
Here’s the first, and hopefully only (you’ve gotta think positively haven’t you) email and answers in-line, to Caterham’s chief fixer, Derek. I called him a couple of times on the Monday morning but the poor guy was only just back from a week off so I was only really calling on the off-chance. I decided…
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Build Session 2 : Engine, Gearbox and Bell Housing
Day 2: front suspension day… or so we thought. First thing Sunday, while I waited for Harry to “wake up”, as he sat watching the football on the TV, I decided we needed the better bodywork protection I’d been thinking about the day before. So, I took one of the spare Caterham cardboard boxes (I…
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Build Session 1 : IVA trim and Steering Rack
And so we’re off and running…. sort of! Saturday morning broke and I was hoping to get a full day’s build in, but of course, things didn’t go to that plan. We ended up doing a bunch of chores around the house, and garden, and didn’t get off to a great start with the car.…
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Our Kit Car Has Arrived
After 151 days since putting in our order, the Purplemeanie Caterham 420R Kit Car has arrived! We got final confirmation of a delivery date earlier this week and a courtesy call from Caterham yesterday confirmed that they would deliver our car before lunch time today… … And at just after 11 this morning the Caterham…
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Pre-build Update #6 – Delays but now “in build”
Breaking news: The Purplemeanie 420R is now “in build”. Caterham have updated their online systems to show that the car is now being built. Delivery is still likely to be end of July or early August. For those of you that have been asking… the Caterham 420R kit car delivery date is delayed but is…
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Pre-build Update #5 – A Project Planned
This week has seen me in the US again, Dallas this time for a couple of days. While there was lots of work to do on the flights, and in Dallas, I did get some time to finish the project plan and review the line drawings I’d previously started. Project Plan Because I’m a Mac…
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Pre-build Update #4 – The Colour is Lotus Aubergine
The Colour will be Lotus Aubergine The colour is going to be Lotus Aubergine. There are many Purple Caterham Seven’s around but I’ve not seen too many that look like they’re Aubergine. Please leave me a comment if you know otherwise. Williams have been chasing for the colour. I had been trying to find something…
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Pre-build Update #3 – Specification Set, Garage Finished and Line Drawings
Purplemeanie Specification Set This week we had a couple of trips over to the Williams car showroom. The first trip was to confirm the final specification of the car. We ended up with the following: 420 (2-litre Ford Duratec engine tuned to 210bhp) R-spec (track specification) Series 5 (Wider bodied SV) Lowered Floors (2″ lowered floors)…
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Pre-build Update #2 – More Garage Prep and a Car in The Space
It’s a quick update on the garage work this week: painting, lighting, the floor and some idea of what space is available for the build. Painting This week we completed the painting of the walls and ceiling, see Update 1 for more info on that. In total I think this modest 16m2 garage with a…
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Pre-build Update #1 – Build Space
Posting Update Before the build starts in earnest we’re hoping to be posting Blog articles weekly, probably on a Sunday. Also, in addition to full weekly posts on this blog we’ll also be pushing new post links to Twitter and to Facebook to let people know when posts have happened. If you want to get notifications of new posts…
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Socialising the Purplemeanie Kit Car Build
The Purplemeanie Engineering Team are building a kit car this summer. Get updates on Twitter, Facebook and on the Build Blog at www.purplemeanie.co.uk.
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Render Me A Colour
Colour… the Biggy. It would almost be better if Henry Ford made Caterhams – any colour as long as its black. There are so many great Caterham colours. There’s the classic green, or the recently more popular Porsche blue. There’s yellows and reds. Decals. Single, double or triple stripes. The options are endless.Initial thinking was,…