BBL Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 I attended a day-long blat in the San Diego area this weekend. I left my home in San Jose on Friday, driving 480 miles to southern California. The blat on Saturday was 250 miles of fun backroads cruising through mostly mountain and some desert areas. Then on Sunday, I returned to San Jose, going through Yosemite national park on the way. This was a bit of a detour, as the day ended up being over 600 miles of driving. The high temperature listed for Yosemite valley floor was 38°C that day, with many places in the central valley in California at or above 40°C. I estimate I drove at least six hours in 35°C or greater ambient temperatures that day, with no adverse behavior from the car. So if any of you Britons ever wondered how a 7 might handle excessively warm weather blatting, the answer is, very well! A huge thanks to Mr. Gary May, wherever he may be now, for putting together such a fantastic car. *NOTE: Car does have the uprated 3-row radiator fitted, with a 260 Cosworth/Duratec and Modine oil/coolant heat exchanger making heat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDubya Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 BBL Sorry I can trump that, drove a 2000Km round trip from Melbourne VIC to the Barossa Valley in SA on a Australia Nation Clubman event. A Hillclimb planned for one of the days, but postponed due to a total fireban as the temperature was between 44 and 48 Deg C. Not a pleasant drive back to my sisters place where we staying. Its the one day when airconditioning was a dream! Danny Danny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smithy7 Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 It's normally cockpit temperature where there's an issue in hot weather not the handling. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 BBL can you please give me the link of your radiator? We have overheating problem here in Italy also. In a track day in summer the coolant temperature goes easily to 115 degrees (Celsius) after 3 or 4 laps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Area Representative dikko Posted June 13, 2014 Area Representative Share Posted June 13, 2014 I'm not sure what upgrades Caterham do for radiators but 'Pro Alloy' in Haverhill Essex GB will make anyone a rad in any shape for a fair price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wile7 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Quoting roberto: BBL can you please give me the link of your radiator? We have overheating problem here in Italy also. Hi Roberto - you have probably looked at this but all the radiator options from caterham are available at the Following link. The triple core radiator is listed on page two (but not sure what car you have) I bought mine via a fellow seveners in France BUT it was originally from Caterham Dave Edited by - Wile7 on 13 Jun 2014 08:44:17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickh7 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 On the way back from Le Mans one year it was very hot and we were getting cooked . We stopped at a café for lunch and there was a stream running along side the garden. We all got in the steam and sat down to cool off . Back in the car it made it for a more comfortable few miles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 You are right, I have a R500 :D And it has the radiator splitted in oil part and water part. (isn't it fun? a 120hp car has a bigger radiator than a 260hp car!) Actually I went to Darford and spoke to the Caterham engineers an nobody had a solutions. Newer cars (such as 485 or 620R) have a bigger radiator but not comatible with the R500 pipes. Maybe I should add additional radiators on the sides like a formula 1! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgrigsby Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 During the se7ens list trip the USA in 2005 we had temps in the high 30's for quite a while, most cars seemed fine. More of a problem was another trip years later, we got stuck in traffic going into Andorra in similar temperatures. That wasn't much fun, the car coped but the water temp spent a lot of time in the high 90's. Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FramerateUK Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Did a trip up to Scotland on the motorway in the hot weather we had last summer. It was well over 30 degrees C. It was fine when moving, but when the traffic stopped we were getting cooked in the car. Eventually started getting very hot and realised that the radiator fan wasn't coming on causing the engine temps to really rise. We had no big problems as the periods of queuing were fairly short and as soon as we got moving the temps dropped right down, but it was a bit of a worry. Turned out that the fan connection just needed a clean. 5 minute job once the nose cone was off! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve-B Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 The USA2005 trip set a high bar for tolerance of heat as Rob mentioned in a couple of places, but the SBFS Half Hoods saved everyone's day in West Texas. Nevada was I think 40C + near Lost Wages which we were trying to hide in the shade of them big 18-wheelers when we could. We've never encountered in 12 years heat that made us climb out of our SV, but we've come close -- almost always when stuck in traffic not moving! In high heat times we've also learned to remove doors and put on half hood and all is well and you can move right along 😶🌫️ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smithy7 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Steve, someone suggested taking doors off and half hood on after we did a Europe trip in high 30's, any suggestions how to store the doors? Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve-B Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Hi Dave, Two ways we've done it, when we still had a wheel carrier we would bungee strap them on the rear facing side. Now we've cut the wheel carrier off, we slide them behind our seats. I keep threatening to invent a way to fold the top inwards......or have removable upright steels in them like a mans shirt collar sticks.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smithy7 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Presume you have flat doors or the seats aren't pushed right back. I'll have a try tomorrow but don't hold out much hope, also don't have rear wheel carrier so that's not an option either. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Kay Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Quoting Steve-B: I keep threatening to invent a way to fold the top inwards......or have removable upright steels in them like a mans shirt collar sticks....Something like sail battens? They're readily available and the hard bit would be sewing the batten pockets on... but an upholsterer could do that easily. Jonathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Biddle Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 On USA 2005 and since, I've found that tipping some water over the upper body cools you down a lot once on the move, evaporative cooling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Whitley Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 Similarly, we used garden spray bottles filled with water to cool us but I doubt it would have been much had we entered Italy a day earlier when the temperature was in the mid 40s Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now