jeffs

Throwing this out as an option... I registered mine first in Montana under a corporation. There are companies that will help you do this. It was painless and Montana does not require an inspection of any kind. I did it because NJ was inconsistent in how they applied the laws to kit cars. When I moved to Florida it was then super easy to register already having the Montana title and registration.... they walked out, checked the VIN and I was done.

Yeah, all is well here. Ended up being far enough outside the path that it wasn't much more than a couple of soggy/breezy days.

While I was absolutely terrified doing it, its not actually that hard to reclear the fenders so the spots don't come back. 1) Clean with wax/tar remover 2) Wet sand with 400-800 sandpaper (opinions vary, I mostly used 600) 3) Clean and clean and clean and clean some more with alcohol wipes 4) Spray with a good 2k clear coat (I used spraymax)

What % of the time is your idle warm up? If you let it idle for 10 min for a 15min drive (though I think that's a mythical thing in the bay area) I could see it having an impact. A 10 min idle for an hour of highway driving probably not more than a 1-2 mpg impact. Probably not an issue since your car is running well, but I recently had my mileage drop horribly. Turns out that one of the two coolant temp sensors has gone bad (one feeding the ECU not the dash) causing it to run really rich. I'm getting under 20mpg city now. Highway for me is typically a little over 4k rpm, also running dry sump (a little warmer but not much over yours), aero screen, roller-barrels, stock tune. Seems really weird your mileage would be so much worse than mine. The 500 came with a few extra aero bits but I can't imagine they make that much of a difference.

I'd say not typical, as my r500 (stock) gets close to 30mpg highway. Major difference could be that I'm running a 6-speed transmission. What is your cruising RPM?

Unfortunately I couldn't get an MBE cable (they are currently on backorder), so I'm pulling the data with an AIM SOLO DL. Oil temp, air temp, oil pressure and air pressure all looked reasonable during these runs. That said I could very well have a bad cable/connection as much as a bad sensor and will do some poking around.

Data makes life so much easier.... Sent my datalogger out to be fixed and just got it back. In the first run I noticed that the engine ran well for a while and then started to surge. Started at 140F which is when the lambda sensor kicks in and both rpm and lambda started a slow sin curve (or cos if you prefer). Disconnected the lambda and reset the ECU. Runs 2 and 3 just idling in the driveway, no surging and no stalling. Will add new lambda sensor to the shopping list. Kept the datalogger in for a run to the store. Things ran fine for a while and then the idle RPM dropped. Data shows the coolant temp dropped down to 20F (high was 170F). The stack dash did not show this so I'm assuming just a bad sensor. I also noticed some noise in the TPS at idle (equates to about 0.2% of full throttle). Temp sensor gave a reasonable reading for the first 5 minutes of the run and towards the end, but in the middle read as low as -5F and as high as 212F (fractions of a sec apart). Does anyone know if the standard Caterham map has a dependency on coolant temp? Just trying to determine if this is the culprit or if the whacky readings are the fault of something else.

Not at all. Shoot me a message and we'll see if we can set something up.

I'm in Ocala and have an S3. It's a bit of a drive, but you are welcome to check it out if you are in the area.

I think the weight gain in a lot of the smaller sportier cars isn't being put towards reliability as much as it is going to comfort. The great example I use for this is that the seat in my mini cooper weighs something like 70x what the seat does in the caterham. The number of people that want comfy seats and quiet rides vastly out numbers those that will sacrifice those comforts for better handling. Reliability is a tough thing to measure. Of all the fun small cars I've had (boxster, miatas, elise, caterham, minis) I've only had one breakdown and that was a fuel pump going on a mini. Maintenance on the other hand I've seen a vast difference in the cars. The elise for instance was good for a brand new set of brake pads every year and tires about every 18 months.

Depends on how many slower cars you get stuck behind My r500 Duratec ran about 90C on the track, but I'll see 100-105C on the streets if I'm stuck in traffic. My fan isn't programmed to kick in until 104 or 105C.

I really enjoyed the elise and the miata, but they aren't close enough to a 7. Without the 7 I would have wanted (ok, I still want) the BAC Mono, but probably would have settled for the Atom.

With a windscreen, doors and a top the inside of the car gets very warm... you wont even turn the heater on if you had one. I almost never use the top (even when I lived in NJ) and my winter setup is just the windshield and doors. I do have the factory heater and it does a little to keep the chill off, but it doesn't add all that much. That said I'll just wear a light sweatshirt down into the upper 40s. With actual winter gear I wouldn't hesitate to drive in much colder weather.

You might keep up with me if you put those double-wide slicks on the orange car... and then painted it yellow to make it faster Yeah, I miss going to the track with you guys, and I'm sure the car does too. There are days when I think that if I'm not going to track it I should sell it and get something a little (and only a little) more practical for the street and for Florida weather.

Stock RBTBs

Thanks everyone for the advice... lg2k... the symptoms of a bad IACV are just about spot on to what I'm seeing. Haven't been able to check it yet, but sounds like a really good lead. Anaximander... I have had a mechanic connect to the ODBII port and he did not pull anything meaningful. Pokey... I don't think its running on 3 cylinders. Plugs seem pretty evenly worn, and the difficulty starting has the feel of a bonkers air/fuel ratio. That said I'm not going to rule it out, and if I can get it to behave badly without stalling I will give that a try. ashyers... I don't remember the model number of the ECU, but it is Caterham stock and locked. I can't connect to the car with Easymap yet b/c it requires a proprietary cable which is currently backordered. The oil temp and coolant temp sensors I believe are working correctly (as I can monitor them and they are returning reasonable values). I've disconnected the lambda sensor to see if that stopped the problem (it did not).

I spoke to him, and unfortunately he said he couldn't help.

Cool, thanks for the advice! Got some cables to shake this weekend I know it is not related to the engine fan. Problem does not kick in when its cold, only when the engine is warm, and will appear at temps below when the fan kicks on. I don't think I've seen it kick in within the first 5 minutes of the first drive of the day. However if I drive the car and stop for gas or something, after starting it when its warm it can certainly show up quickly.

So moving to Florida has made the winter drives much more enjoyable, but one of the unfortunate downsides has been not finding a local mechanic that really understands the car. I've been rather fortunate that I haven't had any problems with the car outside of Caterham's recall on the rear diff bracket... well until now. It seems that I have some sort of electrical gremlin and I thought maybe instead of taking the car to yet another mechanic that doesn't quite get it, I might try to troubleshoot it myself.... I figure if I can nail down the problem I should at least be able to find someone to fix it if I can't do it. So here is what's going on. Problem is intermittent but has been going on a while. Started at happening about once/year and has made its way to about once per drive. The car will drop into not a limp mode, but lets call it 'bad kitty' mode. At idle, bad kitty will drop the rpms by 500-1000. As you can imagine this will sometimes cause the car to stall. When bad kitty stalls she is REALLY hard to get started again. Usually take 4-5 attempts to start and runs really rough when she does start (20% throttle to get 500 RPM kinda rough). After 15s-60s it doesn't want to be a bad kitty anymore and is right back to normal. After poking around on a number of forums and looking at people that have had similar issues I've narrowed it down to a few likely causes: 1) Bad Sensor 2) Bad Ground 3) Less likely but possible: Shorting wire or bad coil pack. Where I need the help is, how do I start to rule some of these things out? I think I get the sensor thing... I can get one of those fancy cables and use Easymap to pull the engine and sensor data. At least I can once SBD gets the cables back in stock, so I think I've got that down. How do I identify if have a bad ground somewhere? Is this something I can do with a multimeter? Would I see a bad coil pack through the easymap data, or is there another/better way to do it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Oh, its a Caterham r500 with a 2.0L Duratec

Yup, doing well. Sadly I haven't made it to the track in forever, but other than that I'm doing well

1100 miles in two days. NJ to FL. Got caught in a huge downpour in PA and the windows fogged so bad I couldn't see... only time I regretted not reconnecting those heated windscreen wires.

I'm in Ocala and have an r500. Certainly understand wanting to see one in person (and make sure you fit). Croc did that for me before I pulled the trigger.

Brought my r500 down to Florida for the winter...and hope to sell my house so I don't have to drive it back to NJ I am looking to have some work done on it while I'm down here. Does anyone know of a good 7 mechanic in the Tampa/Orlando/Ocala areas? I'd really prefer to find someone that knows the car if possible. Thanks!

So for anyone on the fence, it was a great time last year, and I highly recommend the event. Unfortunately I wont know for a few months yet whether or not I can make it. My house is currently on the market and once it finally sells I'll be in the process of moving (likely out of the area). If the car and I are still here come July though, I'll be there.

I'd be in for another track day, but Lime Rock is on my ban list... the walls are just too close.