A very cheap
modifiection that gives the car a more modern
look - well relatively for a seven at least. The
lenses came from my local Land
Rover dealer and are the side lights from
the Defender. The bulbs can be got from any motor
factors, but orange bulbs with the opposing tangs
are hard to find, so I got offset ones and filed
down one of them and they still in the holders
no problem and have worked perfectly for quite
a while now. I think the lenes were around £3.50
for the pair and the bulbs were around £1.50.
I
wrote an article for the Lotus
7 Club magazine, Low Flying, about my winter
project of changing from the original Ital axle
to a stronger Ford item. You can read a copy of
it here
As
part of the Ford axle conversion I decided to
go to the Ford stud pitch and this meant new wheels.
I liked the look of the black minator wheels with
a polished rim but I couldn't really stretch to
a new set of wheels and then new tires to go with
them. I was therefore on the lookout for a second
hand set. In the end Steve decided to sell a set
he had bought earlier in the year while he upgraded
to lighter wheels for his racing. I borrowed one
wheel and a Ford front hub to make sure that the
wheel would fit over my brake calipers. It was
a pretty quick job to swap the hubs over and trial
fit the wheel one evening, then swap it back again.
This also had the benifit that when Jason had
a problem with one of his bearings I had Steve
spare hub to hand.
The fact that these wheels were the colour scheme
was great, but they also came with a pretty mint
set of Yoko 032R fitted. I couldn't wait to try
these out. They are, quite frankly, fantastic.
They do make the steering heavier but the grip
is pheonominal, the car just grips and grips and
means that at safe road speeds you still have
an extordinary amount of grip in hand. I will
never go back to anything less, but the 048's
look nice to try next time, and the Avon CR500's
are meant to be close to the 032R, slightly less
grippy, but they save a lot of weight and last
longer. I'll have to see how my bank balence is
at the time though as the CR500's are a lot more.
I
didn't plan to go the whole hog on this one, but
it happened that way. I had been thinking for
the last couple of years about changing to cycle
wings, read about here
I've
never liked the rear lights on the Caterham. They've
always looked like a bit of an afterthought 'arrggh,
we forgot the rear lights chaps... oh these caravan
ones will do until we find something better'.
I designed a replacment for the rubber block,
have a look here
A
lightweight rear wing protector bulk buy from
Ammo, aka Raceco. A bit higher and a bit wider
than normal to further reduce the paint chips
of my freshly painted car. I fitted them higher
still, see here
In
an attept to reduce the stone chips on the rear
wings now that the car had cycle wings I decided
to make some form of mudflap. I bought some more
aluminium weave adhesive matt (Motrax) from my
local bike shop and also some plain black. I worked
out the shape and cut out both with the black
a little shorter. I stuck them back to back to
give them more stiffness and the non-overlapped
part was stuck to the inside face of the wing.
This didn't hold very well, so I then mixed up
some glass fibre resin and glued them on with
that - it is still holding well, although one
corner is coming away, but that that be re-attached
easily.
They seem to be doing their job well, with only
a couple of stone chips on the rear wings, but
they are curling up at the bottom edge, so I will
probably attach a thin metal strip to hold the
shape.
After
discovering that my starting problems were a seemingly
known problem with the ECU (I wished I had known
when I bought it!) a few people suggested taking
the ECU off line while spinning the engine. Basically
meaning that the engine would be spun up to speed
on the starter before switching in the ECU to
provide a spark. This would stop the ECU firing
too early, just as the engine starts to turn over,
typically stopping the engine dead. To do this
I bought a nice ignition switch from Autocross
for £11.00 with the flip down cover. The
next problem was finding a suitable position where
I couldn't knock it off accidently, which would
kill the engine. I ended up moving the main beam
switch to alongside the flash switch, and then
using the old main beam hole for the new switch.
In this position it is far enough away that I
can't reach it without taking m hand off the wheel.
The wiring is simply a case of putting it in series
with the power line that it takes from the final
position on the key barrel.
I'd
had my eye on the Hawker
Odyssey PC680 battery for a while so when
Roy organized a bulk buy on Blatchat I joined
the list. The battery is only slightly lighter
than the standard Banner, but it offers more starting
amps, something that I felt the Zetec has needed.
It hasn't completely cured my starting glitch,
which is down to the ECU, but it has helped. I
was able to make use of the old battery tray which
was a big bonus, with just the tie down clamp
strip requiring some bending.
First in line for the 2003 winter
weight saving was the boot floor. It seemed to
me to be a fairly easy task to swap the pretty
naff bit of plywood that came with the car for
a thinner and lighter piece of Ali sheet.
I had previously bought some off-cut 1mm sheet
from via Steve
so I contacted them again as they advertise on
the Racecar
For Sale forum and arranged to pick some up.
They are not too far away, in Guildford, and I
got enough to keep my in supply for a good while.
The next job was to cut it to shape. For this
I asked Brent for some help. I just wanted the
right overall size and I'd hack the rest out,
but he kindly cut it all out on his plasma cutter,
so I just dropped it in place. I'll seal the out
edges with some silicone and will fit some riv-nuts
for the front edge fixing, oh, and give it a polish.
