Mike Bees

The links are adjustable for length. Assuming the have the correct arb and the correct links then they can be made to reach.

Mike

By the way Clive Roberts worked at Caterham and was heavily involved in the engineering of the De Dion setup. He left Caterham in the mid-80s and went to Lotus where he was the Program Manager for the M100. He was last heard of working for GM in ths US on their electric car program. Sadly he resigned from the sevens list in mysterious circumstances a few years ago.

Here are some links to related stuff he wrote on the sevens list:

http://www.se7ens.net/archive/sevens.w3archive/9701/msg00364.html

http://www.se7ens.net/archive/sevens.w3archive/9701/msg00409.html

http://www.se7ens.net/archive/sevens.w3archive/9701/msg00469.html

Mike

Posting on behalf of a friend - an excellent buy for anyone looking for a car at the budget end of the Caterham price range:

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Anyone want a top spec Seven at a budget price?

I currently have two Sevens in my garage and one has to go to finance purchase/renovation of the other so it is priced to sell at around £8,000.

What you get for your money is a 1987 long cockpit Caterham with a dry-sumped 1,700cc Harris Performance Engines X-Flow (rebuilt 99), twin 45 DCOE Webers, 244 Kent cam, Vulcan III head with unleaded valve seats, Duplex Vernier timing gear, steel rocker posts, 4 into 1 comp. exhaust Lumenition ignition with rev limiter, mated to lightened, balanced competition clutch and a 2000E gearbox with Quaife straight-cut/close-ratio internals (built with new gears and lubrication mods by Brian Hill 99). Back axle is Escort with RS2000 brakes and a 4.1 limited slip diff.

Overall spec includes FIA race roll bar, full high visibility wet weather gear, honeycomb driver and fuel tank protection, black/ali bodywork, rear-mounted battery, SPR comp springs, adj platform Spax shox, tonneau, boot cover, Revolutions with List 1A Falkens plus a host of spares including

gearbox and diff. The car is fully road legal.

This car was built by me and has been raced, sprinted and hillclimbed ever since and has under 4,000 miles on the clock. It is a multiple class winner including one last year in the highly competitive CCC series beating several 200+ bhp Rover-engined cars. Slow it ain't...

The new owner can continue to embarrass newer cars, keep it for track days or turn it in to a swift road car with the spares package that comes with it and all for a bargain £8,000.

Caterhams this good do not come cheaper.

Interested? email at kim@kadams.demon.co.uk or call me on 0802 201080 m or 020 8422 8171 eves.

You might be able to get someone to custom-build you a catalyst & silencer combo to fit in place of your existing silencer but it could be more expensive than buying off-the-shelf from Caterham - and the catalyst might be too far downstream to work properly.

Is this just to get through an MOT? There must be lots of people who have swapped from the cat system to the competition system who would be prepared to lend or sell their old cat system?

Mike

They must have let you have it cheap - I was quoted 565.96+vat for the magnesium dry sump pan! The ali one is less than half the price and weights 1kg more - fit one of these and invite the wife wear/eat/drink less and you're quids in all round.

Mike

If I remember correctly the Vauxhall race cars used Pagid pads. They're listed on the Caterham parts CD, 152 quid for fronts (4-pot calipers) and 143 quid for rears (2-pot calipers), probably plus VAT. Ouch.

Mike

No idea on xflows, sorry...

Does it have a pressure cap on the header tank? If so could it be faulty (i.e. not allowing any pressure buildup which would in turn allow early boiling)?

Mike

Oh go on, tell us what happens...

Mike

Not heard of that one before. Do it up a bit tighter? OK, a bit obvious that one...

Put a bit of tape round it? Not altogether appropriate on a 32k car I know...

Mike

Nick - the capacities I quoted are roughly what I can get in before it blows some into the catch tank. This is dependent to some extent on the max rpm you use, higher rpm == more likely to eject oil.

Nig - I reckon you should be able to put at least another half a litre in. Lob it in, go for a short blast and then check the catch tank.

Mike

Whether or not you have the conning tower swirly arrangement makes a big difference. If you have the gold pump then you will have the conning tower. Without it the capacity is likely to be less than 4 litres, with it it's in the region of 5 litres - both in my experience.

With the gold pump and no conning tower the capacity tends towards zero very quickly and your engine bay ends up full of oil. Trust me, I know...

Mike

96-onwards cars had stiffer dampers than previously. The rationale was to give a better ride with softer springing and control transient roll with stiffer damping.

Mike

For what it's worth I believe that Champion RC7YCC and NGK BCP7ES are the same heat-wise.

Mike

The K-series does use resistor plugs. Non-supersport engines use NGK BCP6ES, Supersport uses BCP7ES. The latter should be fine in a VVC.

I suspect that the VVC uses platinum jobs because it's a wasted-spark setup - each plug gets to spark twice as often and therefore will wear out twice as fast. If you use the non-platinum ones you may have to change them fairly frequently, but they're cheap so who cares?

Mike

Best thing to do is 'phone Emerald and speak to Karl, or email him (karlpaton@aol.com).

Mike

>>Then again, I'm not even sure there is a piece of foam in the dry-sumped sump. Anyone know?<<

No there isn't.

Mike

The ones I've seen use an MBE unit, which is also used on the catalyst-friendly version of the Superlight R I believe.

Mike

Blimey, I'd always thought that good old leaded petrol was pretty flammable.

Mike

I've seen plenty of people sprinting wet-sumped no-catch-tank K's without any scrutineering problems.

Mike

18psi (cold) IIRC.

Mike

Hi Steve,

The only reason for going from A510 to A520 would be down to the sizes available. I'm swapping to 15in S-02's, or I would be if a wheel maker called D***g hadn't pissed me about and failed to deliver as promised, absolute tossers. What is it with the Motorsport industry? Anyway, I've got the tyres, and if I ever get around to using them I'll let you know.

Mike

Kadett/Astra GSi. And the GSi version of whatever the Opel version of the Cavalier was called...

Mike

Is this the lens cracking around the screws and detaching itself? I 'lost' mine this way - I've got a picture of me exiting the chicane at Goodwood taken a few nano-seconds after the foglight lens gave up the ghost, it's about 6 feet away from the car in the picture.

I reckon that over-tightening the screws can crack the plastic.

Mike

I switched from the 8% quick rack to the 22% and am very pleased with the change for both road and track use. Next time I'd go for the 22% from the start.

The rack ratio has nothing to do with bump steer. Bump steer happens without any movement of the steering wheel. It's caused by the effective length of the steering arm changing when the wheel moves up or down with respect to the body.

Getting your front tracking/camber/castor set up to suit the wheels/tyres & your usage pattern and checking the bumpsteer is the right way to fix nasty front-end habits. Masking them (which you can do to some extent) with a low-geared rack isn't, IMHO.

The se7ens mailing list had a good discussion on bumpsteer recently. Go to http://www.se7ens.net/cgi-bin/wilma/sevens, type "bump;steer" (without the quotes) in the search box, check "Restrict matched files", select "January 2000" from the list of months, and click the search button.

Mike