inchoate

looks like a lotus twin cam to me. with the snail it should be a very quick car.

I'm planning to put a third brake light on my roll bar to slightly reduce the chance of a soccer mom rolling over me in a 6000 lb. suv. My car is an '87 so I don't have connectors for the tail lights so my plan was to get a 12" LED light bar and just tap into the wiring going to either the left or right tail lights. Seem like a sound plan or would I be better off running dedicated wiring from the brake light switch? The list of little things this car needs never seems to get any shorter.

I noticed today that the carpeting is peeling off of my transmission tunnel. It looks like it was stuck on with some sort of contact cement originally. I was just going to clean it up and stick it back down with some high temp contact cement, Pliobond 35 or similar. If anyone has a better idea I'd be interested.

BSW and BSF have a 55° thread angle so you can't really read a good thread pitch with a 60° SAE or metric thread pitch gauge. If you are going to deal with british cars a whitworth thread gauge is a good tool to have lying around. my rule of thumb is that if you can't get a read on it with a regular gauge it's probably british. things get really interesting when you get into the BA fasteners which have a 47.5° thread angle. then there's BSC, BSPP, and BSPT. the brits were quite fond of creating screw thread systems for specific applications. i'm a big hit at parties.

great looking car! i also want to see what's under the hood.

back when i used to work in the trades i always used a minivan. i had a dodge that i could put 4 x 8 sheet goods flat in and it was totally nondescript, never got broken into by folks looking for tools. everyone used to make fun of me but in the end my vehicle was cheaper to run, easier to park, could fit more and longer stuff than pickups and nothing ever got stolen out of it. i will admit that it was a little awkward when i was courting so i bought a mustang for going out on the town.

+1 for stubby wrenches. After working on cars for 25+ years this was the only thing I had to add when I got the Caterham. Interestingly my dad's '62 is a lot easier to work on, much more space to maneuver.

just in case someone needs this information in the future i can confirm that the screws that attach the windscreen to the windscreen stanchion on a 1987 caterham are in fact 2BA. hope this helps someone out someday.

sorry you had such a difficult experience. when i had questions about my car's VIN i joined the british 7 club. it ended up being money very well spent and i will probably renew my membership for the foreseeable future. the archivist for caterham is a member of the club and by asking very nicely i was able to get copies of the original order and build sheets for my car. additionally, although most of the BDR HPCs have gone to japan there is still a lot more knowledge about the cars on that side of the pond and they've been very helpful when i've had questions. you might want to try a different DMV if you run into similar problems in the future, sometimes a different clerk can work miracles. FWIW my chassis does not have "HP" stamped next to it's number and my build sheet says "HPC spec" so the stamp on the chassis is not necessarily diagnostic of an HPC car.

Anybody know what size the screws that attach the windscreen to the stanchion are? I'm measuring a major diameter of .1805" and the the pitch isn't quite 32 TPI or 32 TPI whitworth or .08mm. I have a horrible feeling that they're #2 BA, can anyone confirm this?

I have new Misab sandwich plates and rubber grommets from Burton in England and they look to be high quality. Of course the weather here has deteriorated so I haven't had a chance to work on the car, maybe next week. The info about the engine mounts is interesting. My car has spent most of it's life sitting and it wasn't particularly well looked after, I've had to replace quite a few rubber bits. I'll give the engine mounts a good hard look the next time I have the hood open.

I've heard references to "Thackeray washers". Same thing?

I have reason to believe that the sandwich plates on my carbs have seen better days. I got a new set of sandwich plates and grommets and I'm getting ready to swap everything out. My Weber carburetor book says to spin the mounting nuts down until everything is in contact and then tighten a further 1 1/2 turns. Does that sound right? If someone has a better idea I'm open to the opinions of those with more experience in the matter.

FWIW i've had very positive interactions with Burton. Very easy to deal with and everything i've gotten from them has been high quality.

My car came with a VIN number but no chassis plate. It was quite a journey but I was eventually able to confirm that the VIN number on the DOT documents was in fact the VIN that the car came with from Caterham. I'm still can't decide if I should make up a chassis plate.

I've also kicked around the idea of getting a set for my car. My dad had one for his '62 but the only time I ever saw it on the car was when he was headed to a competition event of some sort. Makes me think they probably aren't great to live with on a day to day basis.

last I checked Sevens and Elans had relocated to Florida.

interesting. there's no desperate need as these would be track wheels. i'll keep my ear to the ground and something will come along.

Interestingly I find myself in need of a set of 13" wheels. Where did you get your Panasports?

If you wait a few months crashed Type Rs with salvageable engines are going to start showing up, prices will probably be high given supply and demand. Where do people usually put the intercooler for turbocharged 7s?

I hope you don't think I'm stepping on your toes with this but the model seemed like a nice idea/project while I'm waiting for my car to come back from the shop. Here's the one I built: I actually had a fun time putting it together and as you point out, it illustrates where the problems will pop up if you went full size. Now I just need to find a good drawing of an S2 or S3 frame for my next model.

So it turns out that my VIN is actually my chassis number and everything is hunky dory. Should I make up a chassis plate? It might be a fun project but at the same time the car's never had one and I sort of believe in originality. Thoughts?

I have some persistent questions about my '87 (or possibly '88) Caterham. I have a VIN number on the title, a frame number and an engine number. My car lacks a chassis plate or any other identifying features. I thought it might be worth getting in touch with the Caterham folks over in England so see if they might be able to shed some light on my car and maybe provide me with a replacement chassis plate. Does anyone have an email address or telephone number for them? I've looked around a little bit but I can't seem to find any good contact information.

I ended up ordering them from Burton Power. Got some new sandwich plates for good measure. I don't thing there are too many BD 7s around these days but if the leads are good I'll let people know. Yeah, usually I'd just build them myself but the boots on the wires are a little weird and I couldn't find them anywhere. Thanks for the suggestions folks!

The spark plug leads on my BDR engined Caterham are really chewed up and I'm having a heck of a time finding a new set. Anybody know where I might find some?