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Broken CSR Rear Upright - Any Experiences?


MarkTheGoose

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Doc. - great question... Car is on axle stands in my garage, with both rear hubs hanging off (brake lines appropriately protected!), so not going anywhere. Slightly complex set of moves going on:

Two shiny new Damper Clevis in the post on their way here - should arrive tomorrow. I'm then driving them to Coventry to be anodised and they should be ready for collection middle of next week (£20).

My two original damper clevis off to Leos by post to have the wishbone pins extracted - Luke has a piece of scaffolding pole with a 25mm spanner on the end + what he described as a flame thrower for the job!!! He will then post me back the bits.

Because Luke's parts are different, I also need new inserts instead of the standard top-hat spacer. Luke doesn't have any, but will turn some up for me and send them to me with the dismantled wishbone pins.

With luck and reasonable support from the Royal Mail, I hope to be reassembling the car weekend of the 8th August.

As this has sort of turned from a thread to 'build blog', I will provide updates here *smile*

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Since this is a thread about CSR rear, a friend of mine has just finished installing home made rear antiroll bar on his CSR. It works well, he immediately ended up softening the rear springs. Photos avasilable for whoever is interested. 

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OK - that made me laugh out loud!

I can actually see myself scrabbling around at the weekend to reassemble it. Booking the Monday off work, driving up to Anglesea in it for 5 hours and breaking something on the first lap ... I think I need to actually just try driving it in normal conditions before I start 'testing' it & me! Although, I know Finlay did put some track miles on it and it is my plan in time to do the same in due course. Fish & Chip run might be required first ...

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Possibly sadly, or not, depending on your point of view, what an interesting read. This is where the club comes into its own. I was about to say i'd run a price through our machine shop to make you a pair, but £120 looks fair enough. Great result.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Team LEOS Motorsport provided the pair of new Damper Clevis (Material is HE30 - which probably needs Aerobod to clarify what that means). They need a different spacer, instead of the standard top-hat - you can see the damper mounting hole on (top left of picture) is much deeper than standard part, so Luke turned me up a couple of those too.61763773019__5D1131E3-A383-4234-9E2F-5B0416B4C72B.jpeg.62e039793535c7a60d2b2c31bb3bf920.jpeg

This is the original damper bolt with the standard top hat spacer:

IMG_3692.jpeg.7c27d4596491cf17949a7715640a215a.jpeg

and this with the new LEOS spacer:

IMG_3702.jpeg.dbc0b50c673c7a6b8d1d50ccfb5a2306.jpeg

I also sent Luke my old clevis to have the wishbone pins removed - he ended up using the "flame-thrower & scaffolding bar approach" - you can see that the anodising has gone from the old part it got so hot:

IMG_3701.jpeg.86c0600452f6c99a6b3da0d54fa31ee6.jpeg

Advanced Surface Engineeing in Coventry then anodised the two parts for me (took 3 days, but they did it free of charge - thank you!). It's a gunmetal hard anodised finished (looks great - photos don't really do it justice), so this part should now last longer than the rest of the car! I've reassembled them with the spacers and glued in the wishbone pin (Loctite 270 - so not coming out again in a hurry)

IMG_3704.jpeg.6325687ed5dcd0234306123ca4899ff6.jpeg

The plan is to put them back on the CSR this afternoon ... at long last

 

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Looks like a great result, Mark!

The HE30 is most likely a T6 tempered 6082 alloy (HE30 is a common name for 6082 aluminium when in an extruded form, but doesn't indicate it's temper).

In this type of machined application the typical choice would be 6061-T6 or 6082-T6, they are both very close in properties, with both having the same yield strength (270MPa),  6082-T6 having the edge in ultimate strength (330 vs 310MPa) and 6061-T6 having the edge in fatigue strength (96 vs 95MPa).

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So, it's all back together and has been for a shakedown blat (3 times!). I jacked it up after the first and made sure that everything that I'd undone was still tight (slightly paranoid).

I sort of feel guilty now for not having a photo of the new bits back on the car (maybe tomorrow), but gosh it's nice to have it working again - although I could have used aircon today in the Midlands - we reached 35C.

 

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Elite - assume that was banter, rather than a serious question?

Two reasons:

1. There's hopefully no need for the wishbone pin to ever come out of the clevis again - unless I crash it, in which case it will probably be somebody else's problem ...

2. Luke at Leos Motosport said that for his race CSRs he had tried just doing the wishbone pin up very tight, without Loctite and then the same with the nut on the top of the wishbone, but no matter how tight he did them, the pins always worked loose in the clevis

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I am only an amateur mechanic, but I  believe a medium strength locktite can make it easier to separate parts in the future by sealing the threads and preventing salt water causing corrosion. For something so safety critical which doesn't have nyloc or anti-vibration washers,I would definitely want the peace of mind that thread lock gives *smile*

Duncan

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Fair comments both... Looking at it, there isn't a simple way to redesign it. I guess it would be possible to include a lock nut in the bottom of the damper clevis, but that might compromise the overall strength of the part. As for the heat altering the characteristics, completely agree. Luke told me that the wishbone pin is fine - the steel didn't get hot enough to cause problems, but that the old 'good' damper clevis shouldn't now be used, as it could well have different properties due to the heat

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A simple solution to secure the pin is a metal plate between the damper support body and the wishbone pin, 1 side you knock downwards the other side upwards.

I understand a car manufactor prefer to use Loctite as there is no washer one can forget to add as the Loctite comes with the bolt but there is no need to use it on a Caterham.

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  • 2 years later...

Bit of a thread resurrection, but having seen this when I was researching CSRs befor buying, and then having seen a shunted CSR as a result of this issue, I decided to check mine this week.

One side cracked off as I unwound the bolt, the other is cracked through on one of the lugs. The car has done just under 40k miles.

Lucky escape. If you've got a CSR, it'd be worth getting the mounts off and checked (no way of seeing it on the car unfortunately).

21CF7CC9-CD05-4837-AAE2-23EAA52A8DF9.jpeg.daa3a87ddd26753d7548cba4fbf32c04.jpeg

EB1F07F0-5757-4131-B481-EAF75DCB7204.jpeg.b8c43677535a89a7c2cc402cab7fd7c4.jpeg

 

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  • 8 months later...

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