inchoate

once the dampers are off the car it's not that big of a deal to swap the springs out. I'll probably put the spares I have on the car just to see how they feel. If they don't work I'll go down the rabbit hole. TBH most of my suspension tuning knowledge comes from motorcycles. This might be a nice opportunity to dig into car suspension tuning.

The spring on the car: 13 coils a remarkably consistent .357" wire diameter. 2.61" OD Can't give you a free length at the moment but I'll probably pull the dampers next week.

OK, I threw the Mitutoyos at that spring and here's what I got: 8 Coils Free length: 9.656" or 245mm Wire diameter .356" which is super close to 9mm ID: 1.92" at the unmarked end and 1.935" at the end marked with red paint so 48-49mm OD: a somewhat predictable 2.612 or 66.7mm I arrived at these measurements by using a set of digital calipers and averaging out measurements from several locations. They're probably not perfect but they should suffice for ballpark numbers.

Are you asking for a wire diameter? I've got appropriate tools to measure just about anything. Don't have a spring dyno though, so I can't give you rates. I'll post up some numbers when I'm home this evening.

I dug the extra springs out of the parts disaster. No clue what they might be but I might just go ahead and chuck them on and see where they get me.

Here's the front suspension loaded and unloaded. I've got some free time next week so maybe I'll pull a damper off and see what's going on.

I'll post some pictures when I get a chance, but I work at a University and were in the middle of finals at the moment. Car has a wet sump that is below the bellhousing. I'm looking into some options on that front but I'll probably keep the wet sump for the time being. The car came with another set of springs but honestly I've never looked too closely at them. I'm a little wary of putting new/stiffer springs on 35 year old dampers. I was able to find the Caterham part numbers for the original dampers and springs but it turns out that's not all that useful.

I'm warming up tie up some loose ends on my car that have been nagging at me for a few years. I noticed that I've got about 60mm of ground clearance under the sump, which might explain why I keep hitting it on things. The front springs don't have a lot of adjustment left in them before they become coilbound so I'm thinking it might be time for a replacement/upgrade. It seems like there might be plenty of resources over in England but I'd rather shop on this side of the pond for logistical reasons. Any thoughts about who I should call or what I should be looking at? FWIW this is strictly a road car so I'm looking for a suspension for spirited driving on roads in less than stellar condition.

OK, so this project is starting to move along but as with everything with this car there are some bumps in the road. I know that on the RHD BDR powered cars the dry sump oil tank sits on the exhaust side of the motor but I'm thinking that may not work for my LHD car. Where do you guys like to put your oil tanks? I'm thinking in front of the passenger's footwell but I'm at work so I can't look at it right now.

Thanks! Not sure California is any better than England logistically, but 3 hours behind is easier than 5 hours ahead in a lot of ways. The brits are suggesting I contact Wilcox. I guess I'll make a few calls and see what various people have to say.

I thought about giving Pegasus a call, I've done business with them before and they seem to be pretty reasonable folks. I'm not familiar with Dave Bean.

The pan is steel and my buddy who's a really good welder is saying that modifying the pan is the way to go. I'm also pretty sure I've got another pan somewhere in my garage, so there's a backup if things go pear shaped. I might go out and check the suspension height before I pull the motor and see what I can get in the way of more ride height. Easy is always nice. Yeah, not my first rodeo so I have a sense of how these sort of projects tend to get out of hand financially. I'd really like to find a complete kit from somewhere so I can get a better sense of the numbers. I also wouldn't mind having someone knowledgeable on the other end as I'd really rather not blow up my motor, kind of hard to find another one.

couldn't tell you. not to many BD resources in the states but looking over the Burton Power website I'd think I'd plan for $2kish to do my car. xflow is the same block so probably the same parts. if you start digging please share.

I've got a '87-88 Caterham with a 1700 BDR motor. The factory BDR cars all seem to have come with a dry sump oil system but mine was delivered to the states as a kit and is wet sump. I'm getting a little bit tired of banging my oil pan on the pavement and occasionally having the drain plug stop sealing and dumping all of the oil onto the garage floor. I'm going to pull the engine in the fairly near future to take care of some other stuff in the engine bay so now's the time to address the issue. Should I just straighten out the oil pan, accept that it's one of the fun things about owning a caterham and get on with my life, or should I try to figure out a dry sump system to gain a little more ground clearance? If anyone's got ideas I'm all ears.

You might want to get in touch with Redline Components in the UK. They don’t have much of a web presence but they are very responsive to emails or phone calls.

i'd say it's definitely new fuel tank time. my car had a fuel cell in it at one point and i was pulling foam out of my fuel filter until quite recently.

My car has a BDR in it, but I'm wet sumped so not too much to add. I've been gathering information about BDR motors but they're hen's teeth in the states. I found it very helpful to join the British 7 club, lots of good information over there. If you can speak Japanese the BDR has a serious cult following over there.

i put 30 psi in my tires if i know the car is going to sit for more than two weeks. i don't know if it does any good, but it's not a big deal to air them down when it's time to go for a drive. i haven't had any flat spotting issues so i'll keep doing things the same way. as far as the rest goes, i do like everyone else. fill the gas tank, add sta-bil, and pull the battery disconnect. i'm a big believer in fuel stabilizers for long term storage. the ethanol added to gasoline these days loves to absorb water from the atmosphere and that causes all sorts of interesting issues. some of my friends with "interesting" cars will fill them up with gas before they put them away and the drain the gas tank and refill before they drive again the the spring. that seems a bit extreme to me, but i understand the thinking.

I ended up making a set of brackets myself because I didn't want to have to drill any holes in anything. I ended up with this: and here with the mirror: the worst part was sourcing the longer 2BA screws to attach the bracket to the stanchion/windscreen. i'm very happy with the setup, very good visibility and it looks good if i do say so myself. edit: sorry about the giant pictures, not sure what happened there...

I went up for the first time this year. I had a great time and there was some fun stuff there. I have to agree about the course and crowd control, seems like a bad interaction between a spectator and a car on track is inevitable if they keep doing things the same way. It will be a shame because I feel like it's a good event with a lot of potential.

I hear you about the clamps but the roof isn't an issue for me. I got those clamps from Summit Racing and I think they're intended for a Jeep or something like that. I'm sure with a bit more poking around one could find something more elegant but I figure I'll live with it as is for a little while, I can always revisit it in the future.

Thanks. I was leaning toward Areomotive or possibly the Weber one. I put a new diaphragm in the Holley and installed a fuel pressure gauge and it seems to be rock steady at 3 psi. I'll run it as is with the gauge in place and see if anything changes.

Here's the light. I attached it to the roll bar with a couple of clamps: I tapped into the power going to the right rear brake light and picked up a chassis ground in approximately the same location. No pics of that because it's a little hard to see what's actually going on. I wired in a flasher relay that I found on ebay. It lives in the little box with a switch to allow me to turn it off if I need to. Please excuse the appearance of the trunk area, my car was built with the intention of it being a track only vehicle and I'm between trunk carpets at the moment. When I do something about that I'll probably remount the box. The idea was to have it be quickly removable hence the modular connectors. I can get you a parts list if you'd like but there are some caveats. The light itself came as a bare unit so I had to fabricate the aluminium chassis to hold it. I also had to do some refinishing on the clamps as they were effective but not up to my standards when I got them.

My car is fitted with a Holley fuel pressure regulator. I noticed that it was weeping fuel out of the vent hole the other day and sure enough the diaphragm was shot. I have a rebuild kit on the way and I've decided to actually test the fuel pressure to make sure it's doing it's job correctly. My research has uncovered that those Holley regulators have a reputation for poor function and reliability. If I don't like the results of my testing what regulator should I look at? My engine bay is a little tight, so smaller is better.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I ended up fabbing up something out of various bits. I ended up putting a flasher relay on it but I've got a switch in the trunk so it can be turned off if necessary. In a fit of creativity I also put everything together with weather pack connectors so the whole thing can be taken off in about a minute if needed.