Ownership Verified: We can rebuild it... we have the technology (7 - take two)

Double post, yay!

In the original setup I had a gauge for water temperature and oil pressure. The water temperature gauge is electronic, but the oil pressure one is mechanical! So there's a thin tube running all the way to the side of the engine block. But the thing is, the gauge is slow and not immediately visible. I wanted a way of having an instant warning on oil pressure. So I got a T-piece to insert between the engine block and the pressure gauge pick up line. This allowed me to add an electronic pressure switch, adjusted to switch when pressure drops below 10 PSI or something like that.



I wired it so that an ultra-bright yellow LED near the pressure gauge comes on when pressure is low, so it is very easy to spot.

Another thing was the oil temperature. I thought, with the engine of this age it will not hurt to warm it up properly before pushing, and water temperature doesn't tell the whole story. So I added a temperature sensor. This is where it's connected:



What you see there between the oil filter and the block is a so called sandwich plate. This plate is a pickup point for an oil cooler this car has installed.Only one line is connected there, the other one is hanging loose, which makes it look like it goes into the filter, don't be confused :p So on the side of this sandwich plate was a plug, which I replaced by the bright red adapter into which the temperature sensor goes.



It's a pipe thread, very visibly conical. The idea is that you screw it in once, applying sufficient torque, which crushes the threading, sealing the connection.

And the oil filter hangs just in front of the radiator:



So anyway, I have the sensor, how do I monitor it? I only have 3 little gauges on the dash: fuel level, water temp and oil pressure. There isn't really place to drill another hole for a gauge and make it look good, I would need a new dashplate for that. Alternative would be to get a double gauge, like this. It's a very cool solution, but it wouldn't fit from an aesthetic point of view - the rest of my gauges are Smiths :p

So it decided to do a common hack, use water temp gauge for 2 purposes, adding a toggle switch under it to select the mode of operation. This is what it looks like (couldn't find a better pic, sorry):



Left gauge is oil pressure and right one is water temp. The toggle switch between them selects the mode for the water temp gauge. When it's pointing towards the oil gauge - oil temp sensor is connected, and when it's pointing towards the water temp gauge - water temp sensor is connected. Simple! My reasoning was, that oil temperature reading is not necessarily needed after it reaches a certain point, so it will only be used for warmups, after which the switch goes into the water position. You can see the LED I was talking about there as well, between gauges on the top. It's small, but believe me - it's bright :)
 
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you arent just rebuilding this car to when bought you're improving everything you can :thumbsup:
 
So that undone engine mount I mentioned, this is the time to explain why. To attach the transmission to the engine, one connects the bellhousing to the block by half a dozen of bolts. Starter motor also bolts there from the engine side. But the bellhousing is somewhat larger than the receiving part on the engine, and so the sandwich plate between them is required to cover the gaps. The sandwich plate is in two pieces: the upper plate and the lower plate. When we were putting the engine in, I found my lower plate, but not the upper plate! The engine couldn't wait though, so it went in anyway, gearbox bolted on it without the sandwich plate, which I would order later and try to insert in-situ.

Miraculously, the upper plate reappeared later on. And the following sequence shows the process of installing it.

"Need... one.. more... cm.."


Unbolted the engine mount to be able to actually separate it from the gearbox (which is bolted to the floor).


Woohoo, the hardest part is done.


And the rest of it is in. The bolts are re-installed and tightened.


I like the fact that I can do a thing like that in an hour and alone with this car :)
 
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I knew you were going to improve it. Nice way of using the water gauge, I really miss an oil temperature gauge on my car, especially in winter :/.
 
Glad to hear you are rebuilding the car.

Too bad about all the shit with the insurance and the police.

I'd like to get my hands on a 7 at some point in my life.
 
That's some seriously brilliant work, i am impressed. Suddenly simply taking the engine out of my car to replace a few seals looks like a walk in the park.

I have to repeat it, i'm impressed.
 
Nice to see that you are working on it again! Hopefully it will be back on the road kicking asses very soon!
 
Fitting the windscreen. Precision science :)





And it's in. Seems to fit more or less.



Ffffff......




EDIT: The windscreen is the one thing I'm not that satisfied with, atm. I have a goal of eliminating all chrome/alu parts in the exterior, so a black framed screen would fit very nicely. And even better if it was heated too (hood up + rain = screen fogged up from inside). It's almost $400 from Caterham though, so I'm monitoring ebay now and then. Obviously delivery of such large piece of glass might be difficult. But it's not a pressing issue, just something to keep in mind.
 
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Didn't realize the aftermath of the crash was such a PITA. Not to mention the restoration. Respect for kicking the ass of crappy odds.
 
Thank you for the kind words, good sirs.

Next batch of pics coming up...

Here I just connected a filling hose to the fuel tank. As you can see, it turns 90 degrees not far from the cap. That makes it a pain to fill with fuel, you can't just put the pistol in and press the button, it will splatter back and either trigger the cut-off sensor in the pistol or just pour out from under the pistol all over body work. So filling up may take a while and requires precision :)



There I also just installed the rollbar. Mine is so called FIA roll bar, which is higher than stock Caterham used to be. Here's a very good comparison of 3 types of rollbars, and shows why it pays off to get a high FIA bar, and that was a must requirement for me when I was looking for a car:

Standard
Low FIA bar
High FIA bar
(c)

I also have a petty-strut for it, which is a link that goes from the upper beam down to the passenger footwell, which obviously makes it impossible to use the passenger seat, and is typically only needed in racing (if for some reason you don't use a full cage already).

Sorry for the dark image, but here you can see how it's bolted on:



At the front on each side it has 3 holes, one of which slots over a raised piece on the chassis to lock the position. The leftmost bolt is the top mount of the rear shock absorber, which is why there's a rubber cushion. The center bolt is the main one holding the rollbar down, and the one on the right functions also as seatbelt mount. All three effectively pin it down to the rear bulkhead of the chassis. And then 2 bars link it to the rear of the boot, to stop the rollbar from tipping over if the car rolls.

And that shock mount, I found a pic without rear wings to show how that is done:



This is the old way, de-dion cars have a loop mount on top, which is why none of the long shocks on that pic on previous page fit my car. Something I wasn't aware of when buying stuff off ebay :(

Oh, and see how smooth the sideskin is? And the rear wings are bolted onto it with what felt like 50 little bolts and receiving nuts on the other side. You can imagine the amount of time I spent measuring the exact position of the wing before drilling a ton of holes into the fresh alu skin.

As well, it's a pain to reach to the other side and hold the locknut while turning the bolt on the other side. Which when I discovered rivet nuts! It's a blessing! You drill a hole and rivet them in place like a normal rivet, and end up with a neat threaded hole, which will actually tighten the rivnut as you screw the bolt in there. The next step will be replacing all the bolts with nylon ones, so if something hits the wing, it wont rip the aluminium skin out, but instead will snap a bunch of 4mm nylon bolts.
 
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Didn't realize the aftermath of the crash was such a PITA. Not to mention the restoration. Respect for kicking the ass of crappy odds.

I agree.
You were my hero before for doing something I want to do and now much more so for not giving up.
 
The next step will be replacing all the bolts with nylon ones, so if something hits the wing, it wont rip the aluminium skin out, but instead will snap a bunch of 4mm nylon bolts.

Great idea, that. Very clever, and will save you lots of money. Might add some time, but I'd rather spend a little extra time than money.
 
The next step will be replacing all the bolts with nylon ones, so if something hits the wing, it wont rip the aluminium skin out, but instead will snap a bunch of 4mm nylon bolts.

i've been wondering why anyone would need those cheap looking plastic bolts!! makes sense now :)
 
This is the plate where the motor for the windscreen wipers is mounted on (looking from below, obviously). This is also a a local ground point for all under-dash electrics. And because powdercoating isn't conductive, I scraped some off to get to bare metal.


(public's cock-wheels! :eek:)

Fitting the wipers motor with it's metal arm. The arm also serves another purpose, most of under-dash wiring is going to be hanging from it.



But that's not right, it doesn't tighten up properly! I guess the bracket is not meant for this particular motor, and I don't remember how it was when I was taking it apart... No panic, though. Generic 2? rubber mat, a bit of cutting and voila:



No chance in hell it will move now :) And it's actually also anchored to the scuttle panel (ie the piece over the dash, where the windscreen is bolted on) with two wiper screws.

And one pic from the other end of the car, this is the fuel filter, hidden in the nose near the carburettors. The bunch of wires on the side are for the headlights (i.e. high beam, low beam, parking light and turn signals).

 
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Original Rollbar - making sure your head rolls away from the car when you crash.
 
I just realized that every thread in this forum section must have a proof pic. Added to the first post ;)

I don't think it would apply to you since you already had a thread with proof of ownership when you first got the car :)
 
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