Roger Ford

Ooh, half tempted to sell my 310R race car and buy this AND a decent bike.

Anyone gone decat on a Sigma and have one for sale?

Are you sure? They only seem to list two - one for "S3" and one for "SV (metric)".

Do they even make them for Imperial cars? Since they're quite recent, I imagine they're only for metric cars. Not sure if they can be made to fit.

I think it's unlikely. I know people have managed to get standard Sigma engined cars through, but only by being a little creative over the rev limit of their cars and the noise testers being reasonably lenient (in contrast to those at Castle Combe, for example). Not sure if a rear-exit R400 is noisier or quieter than a Sigma. Induction noise might also be an issue, though at least that's going to be some way from the noise meter - probably more of an issue for drive-by testing.

Anyone know where I can get new brake cables for a Brian James Minno? Do I have to go to BJ themselves or can I get them elsewhere? Also any hints on fitting and adjusting them welcomed.

Are there any shims under the steering rack? On K-series Academy cars, the steering rack was mounted too low as standard, which contributes to bump steer. Raising the rack height with shims helps with that. There are several articles in the Low Flying archive describing how to adjust it correctly.

For a Caterham? Viofo (or Innovv) if you want quality. Vsysto if you want cheapness. If it's for a tintop then there are vastly more options that I wouldn't want to comment on. I had the Viofo, but it failed after some years use and I bought the Vsysto. Once I'd beefed up the mounts a bit it worked surprisingly well for the price.

There's a lot of fake Mintex pads around. Maybe you got some of those.

Do "type approval regulations" apply to Caterhams in the UK? Does it vary if they are home-built versus factory build?

Pretty sure 1144 are approved for road use. Mintex say they are "Regulation 90 approved where required" whatever that means. The 1155s are described as off-road use only. Are you sure the sound you mention isn't just rust on the disks due to non-use for a short while? Edit: ECE Regulation 90 appears to be the current EU standard for road-going brake pads.

Don't bother with bigger calipers. Race cars up to 310R use the standard calipers and they're more than capable of locking the wheels up. Race master cylinder is very much a personal preference, I hate it as it feels totally wooden to me, but others love it for the lack of pedal movement. If you're not used to non-servo brakes it's going to take a while to get the feel of them in any case.

JP if you can collect, it's yours. It would be a hassle to post. I'll PM my address. Paul, it came from here

5L of what I assume is high quality aluminium/alloy cleaner. I was sent this and some car shampoo in error when I ordered some GP-XT degreaser, but they told me to keep it. I can use the car shampoo, can't see me ever using this so it's free for anyone who wants it. I would much prefer collection from Twickenham, but would consider posting at cost if nobody wants to collect it.

Just a point to consider : for racing we mandate that all competitors carry a camera so the Clerk of the Course and the Driving Standards Team can review footage after any incidents / protests / complaints. Originally most people used GoPro-style cameras. But the number of failures was scary - about 25-30% of cameras didn't record because (1) "I forgot to turn it on", (2) "the battery ran out mid-race", (3) "It somehow switched itself into photo mode instead of video mode", (4) "the memory card filled up", or (5) "I did everything properly but it just didn't record" (the usual one). So now cameras have to be hard-wired to the car's power, and turn themselves on automatically with the ignition (or at a low minimum speed). We get very few failures now. That basically means a dash-cam, but surprisingly the number of dashcams available that are suitable for a Caterham are small. INNOVV and Viofo are are main suppliers (noting that some of the INNOVs don't like having power turned off at the kill switch, making them unsuitable), but when my Viofo failed I bought a cheap kit from Amazon which is surprisingly good once I'd added some foam to the mounts to make them more stable. You don't get 4K at 60fps, or image stabilisation, or any of the other bells and whistles that you get from GoPros. But you do get solid footage which doesn't fail to record.

Personally I wouldn't bother with the sidelight feed. There's few situations where you need sidelights with the ignition off, unless you're likely to park it at night on a road with a speed limit of over 30mph. Some readings of the MOT tester's manual might suggest that it's a requirement, but I doubt any decent MOT shop would complain.

You'll need to take a feed from somewhere. If you want to avoid wires going through the transmission tunnel and into the main loom, then you could take a feed from the brake light switch, which has a permanent (but switched) live, or on some cars you may be able to get a feed from the radiator fan. I believe the K series loom has a live feed to the fan, which is switched on its way to earth. If you want the DRLs to also come on if you use the sidelight switch with the ignition off, you'd need a double feed, with diodes to prevent the current feeding back from the ignition feed through the rear and instrument lights.

Might want to mention what engine you have.

#45 depends what you're doing with the car. We mandated changing solid rear brake hoses to flexible for all cars, and Rakeway half-shafts for Classics, because we considered them necessary for safety. In my opinion we should have mandated the front hub upgrade for pre-2003 cars as well, since a few people lost front wheels when the hub failed.

When I took my gearbox out I found it had a couple of unused electrical connections. Found out they were neutral and reverse indicators (my car doesn't have a reverse light, which is an MOT failure if built after 2009 but nobody's noticed). I saw an opportunity for a bit of gratuitous wiring, and my car now sports little green N and red R lights between the speedo and tacho.

I do, Twickenham, £40. Have we talked on FaceBook?

Actually it looks pretty straightforward to rebuild the existing one, so I'm going to do that.

Anyone got a RH rear caliper surplus to requirements?

Fixed FOC and returned within a couple of days. Despite me telling him that I bought it secondhand 17 years ago. That's what I call customer service! I'll be making a donation to charity in thanks.

The big under-dash box doesn't bother me and I find the ACES very effective in use and highly customisable. The max-revs feature is useful to see how badly I've over-revved it in a messed-up gearchange ("First? I wanted third you b******d"). Also the special Caterham bracket allows me to fit my tonneau cover under it.