SamC

Hi David, as 7 Wonders says, it will be getting flung about from the flywheel so will be everywhere, it won't be filling up per say. Definitely not residue. Tower and surrounding area is now clean. That and it drank 2L of oil in 150 miles of Silverstone National!! I'll remove the starter and borescope it - see if that sheds any light. Cheers both for your help!

Ah, yes, I've heard they are a little delicate and prone to leaking. I'll add them to the list! Thanks. Engine off it is then!

Sorry, typo in my post, I meant crank/main seal. It's been like it since I bought the car in Feb but there were several leaks from the swirl tower which ran down the side of the bellhousing and collected on the underside. So it's been a case of working from top down eliminating the leaks. The fluid ultimately ends up on the join between the bellhousing and the sump, so I suspect some is coming from there too. (The pic below was from when I picked the car up) It is normally only a very small amount on the bottom of the bell housing after normal road driving (ie not enough to drip), but after a track day on Sunday there was more oil than normal around the area. I topped it up so it was blowing into the catch tank after every run as I've heard lots about the CSR's consumption on track, so I'm confident that it was fully filled the whole time.

I've got a small oil leak on my CSR260, which appears to be mostly coming from the foam around the starter motor. (Arrowed in the photo). it doesn't leak when the engine is not running, but gives the sump a good coating when it is! I'm presuming this may be where oil from a leaking cam seal makes itself visible? Anyone with any experience of this that can confirm or deny?

Is anyone doing the SStone trackday this Sunday? I'll be up there for my maiden outing in my 7.

PM sent

Message sent, hopefully not too late!

Hi Ben, my CSR260 idles at about 1200, so pretty similar to yours. Doesn't do the 2,000prm hunting though. Sam

#10. Extremely good point - please ignore me, I'm being daft! I was fully in 'double wishbone' mode having spent the evening fiddling with my CSR! What a plonker!

I'm not familiar with the exact changes between the under slung and side mounted wishbones, but if the only difference when looking in a front or side view is the distance of the inboard mounts from the chassis centreline, then the primary difference will be your camber change with bump. The longer lower wishbone will give you more negative camber with bump which is generally a desirable characteristic. Your antis are varied by the inclination of a line drawn between the fwd and rwd mounts in side view, so would likely be largely unaffected by moving the points inboard (again, assuming that is all the change was).

Great, thanks both!

Hi all, I'm after a few opinions please. My diff seems to have a fair amount of free play, way more than I think is acceptable/normal but I wanted to check that it is beyond the 'They all do that' levels. It has recently been refurbished, which has made it virtually silent after it was previously quite noisy, however the free play it has come back with seems excessive to me. This video shows the movement at the wheel without any prop shaft movement.

So, I finally have an oil tight swirl tower! I use this forum a lot for looking over jobs I need to do before I embark on them so I thought I’d update this in case anyone else needs to do a similar job in the future. (Nothing worse than finding a thread on your exact problem but not knowing the final outcome/solution!!) !!!Warning - long boring post unless you’re looking to strip one for the first time!!! There were three leaks. First was the return line. The hose had taken a set and was no longer fully sealing. Nice easy fix! Second was a nipped o-ring at the bottom of the tower. Odd as there is two o-rings here so I couldn’t work out why the second wasn’t sealing until later. Third was when it was cooling, the small head of pressure in the tower was allowing the oil to wick up the stud threads which are thru holes into the bell housing tank. Caterham didn’t have the o-ring kit in stock, so I asked for the assembly drawing and sourced them myself (PM me if you need the drawing or o-ring details). I changed the material from the spec’d Nitrile to FKM as that is more tolerant to petrol/brake cleaner etc. that may be in the nearby environment. FKM has a tendency to compression set (ie take a form at temperature then be less tolerant to movement), but I imagine it will be fine in this situation. If not, I’ll go back to Nitrile. I cleaned the thread bores with a brake cleaner soaked cotton bud as best as I could, then put Loctite 577 on the studs. When re assembling I found you needed to time one of the internal tubes, but it was impossible to do so whilst assembling it all at the same time. I ended up installing the internal tubes and top manifold without the main external tube fitted so that I could align everything, then (using a smear of Silicone grease in the big female o-ring grooves to retain the big 88 x 1.5mm seals) I fitted the outer tube and the top manifold. It was then that I noticed that if you tightened the sleeve nuts the studs all splayed out! On closer inspection they were bending the lower manifold which opened a gap between the second o-ring and the main tube, hence why it wasn’t sealing properly. So I did the sleeve nuts up finger tight (just enough to torque the top k-nuts), and once the whole thing is assembled these won’t really be required. I’ve torque sealed it just in case so I can see if the studs start to loosen. Most of that will be jibberish/irrelevant to the majority, but I thought it was only fair to contribute back to what is rapidly becoming a very valuable source of information for me! Hopefully someone finds it useful at some point!

https://proplates.co.uk/products/custom-number-plates These are meant to be good. Not used them myself but a colleague just has and rates them.

Good tip thanks, sounds like a sensible technique. Amazingly I haven't actually washed it yet! I've concentrated on cleaning the interior, engine bay, and the rear suspension well. I think I'm subconsciously saving the exterior (and exhaust polish!) as the cherry on the cake!

New TPS fitted and (unsurprisingly) runs like a dream. Cheers all!

Thanks all. My rule of thumb is to drop the torque ~25-30% when lubricating the thread (inc when using wet loctite). Also, avoiding lubricating the taper/under head on fasteners as that will promote them losing preload. I know many will be despairing at me here and prefer to use 'feel', but I'm very much in the 'torque brigade' on structural/critical parts. I'll also go around the plug sealing and check that they are offering some resistance to water ingress.

Yeah, good call, will do. Cheers!

Cheers all! Hopefully I've just got to the bottom of this. New plugs fitted, no change, lambda disconnected no change. Starting from cold it was even more evident just how rich it was running. After a further hunt round I found that the TPS connector had broken (see photo - this was after it had an extra wiggle!). I have only had the car a few weeks and must have knocked it as I was fitting the maintenance charger wiring last week. I suspect the external plug got to that state having lived at a dealer for 5 months over winter. New TPS on order - I'll update here for future reference once it arrives.

Hi All, I'm after a bit of a hand diagnosing very rough running please. Hoping peoples collective experience can shortcut my investigations! I went out for a run in my CSR260 today and about 2 miles in it developed a heavy 'misfire'. On acceleration it wasn't clean but wasn't terrible, on part throttle it was horrendous. Jerky, juddery etc. it stalled every time it dropped to idle. I limped back home and took the plugs out, all were thick with soot, and one was heavily corroded on the external portion. This week I've been rebuilding the swirl tower to try and cure a leak, so yesterday it idled for two 10 min periods as I checked the oil level and monitored for leaks. It idled smoothly throughout. So, my first port of call is to replace the plugs, but I suspect they are symptom rather than cause. Any one got a similar experience? I'm curious about the lambda sensor...

Hi all, thanks for your help. I spoke to Caterham today and although they haven't got the o-rings in stock until next month, they did have the assembly drawing which they sent me. This has all the o-rings and BoM on it. So I've ordered the seals individually from another supplier in a slightly better material so I hopefully won't need to do the job again. If anyone wants the drawing just PM me. Sam

Cheers both. I'll give Redline a shout. I'm not adverse to taking it apart and seeing how it goes, but I'd rather know what I'm dealing with to avoid the sound of something plopping down into the bellhousing tank and having to drop the engine in my first week of ownership!!!

Firstly, hello! – This is my first post having bought a CSR 260 on Saturday – I’ve been lurking and researching for many months though! It is absolutely fantastic so far and I’m slowly getting to terms with understanding the mechanics of it. The first issue I have to address is a minor oil leak that looks to be coming from the lower end of the swirl tower. Does anyone have an exploded diagram/photos/cross section etc. of the swirl tower that I could review please before embarking on the job? Also I know I can get the seal kit from Caterham parts, however they are listing it as out of stock. Any tips on where else to look for a supply? Thanks! Sam