Category: Caterham 420R Build
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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,…
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To Blog or not to Blog
Before getting into this build I had only partially been aware of the Blog culture of building a Caterham… both with formal blogs and in some cases with forum posts in a thread. But having taken the plunge it’s clear there are some great blogs out there. Here are some of the ones I’ve come…
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First Pass of the Build Manual
Ok, so today I had a ten and a half hour flight to Los Angeles from London. There wasn’t much for it but to read the build manual cover to cover. I ended up, reading 2015 V2, which Williams later confirmed as the latest available. I spent the flight trying to digest everything and understand…
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Pre-Build Starts Here
First deposit paid… what to do next? Even with my still unbelievable June delivery date, I’m going to have to wait 3 months. That’s a lot of planning time and evenings mulling things over. On the todo list is: Option selection Colour – a biggy Sort out the build space Options, options It’s all too…
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First Test Drives
After the deliberations covered in the Introduction, I found myself in the Williams Automotive show room talking to their Caterham sales guy, Lindon. He was more than happy to let me have a test drive in a couple of 7’s, talk through options and to see what worked. First off, coffee, followed by a sit…
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Introduction
I’ve always wanted to build a Caterham, for as long as I can remember. It was one of those bucket list things but I just never had the time. Recently we had a couple of those life events that everyone goes through. They focused my mind on the fact that I’m not getting any younger…