Lotusfan

Thanks for the replies and suggestions! I found a local exhaust shop willing to take a look, but they weren’t excited about the 1 1/2 inch tubes. The tractor suppliers look promising as a few minutes on the Tractor Supply site shows stuff that might work and look right. Thanks!

Does anybody in the US have a suggestion on obtaining a new muffler for a Series 2 Seven, or have knowledge on how feasible it might be to cut one open to repack it? The problem is that the inlet accepts a 1 5/8” pipe and the muffler is 2 3/4” in diameter. Local exhaust shops aren’t interested when I tell them the tube diameters. I’m wondering about finding a motorcycle shop.I don’t know for sure if what I have is original but my suspicion that it’s about right for the period and I’d like to keep it similar.

Sorry for the double post…I posted this to @Randy Flowersfirst thread. Mount a third brake light; the cross on your roll bar looks like a perfect spot. Super simple to wire up. I went overboard because the number of clueless idiots texting and not paying attention on the road scares the hell out of me. I used an FIA rain light and wired it up so that it flashes when I use the brakes. Super bright and obnoxious, but I’ve had police cars behind me and not been pulled over yet. I got mine from Pegasus. The front markers and tail light bulbs have been replaced by LED’s (cheap). Another thread on here tells about an incredible deal from Toyota on 7” replacement H4 headlights and I got a set of those waiting to go on, but I seldom drive any distance at night so it may take me a while to get around to it. Just drive really defensively with the assumption that everybody around you is oblivious and doesn’t see you and you’ll be fine. My heat shield seems to cut down a lot on the temp, but I haven’t tested it with a bare leg. Watch your daughter getting out and she should be fine. Almost forgot to say, why would you worry about anyone stealing your doors? What would they do with them? Enjoy!

Mount a third brake light; the cross on your roll bar looks like a perfect spot. Super simple to wire up. I went overboard because the number of clueless idiots texting and not paying attention on the road scares the hell out of me. I used an FIA rain light and wired it up so that it flashes when I use the brakes. Super bright and obnoxious, but I’ve had police cars behind me and not been pulled over yet. I got mine from Pegasus. The front markers and tail light bulbs have been replaced by LED’s (cheap). Another thread on here tells about an incredible deal from Toyota on 7” replacement H4 headlights and I got a set of those waiting to go on, but I seldom drive any distance at night so it may take me a while to get around to it. Just drive really defensively with the assumption that everybody around you is oblivious and doesn’t see you and you’ll be fine. My heat shield seems to cut down a lot on the temp, but I haven’t tested it with a bare leg. Watch your daughter getting out and she should be fine. Almost forgot to say, why would you worry about anyone stealing your doors? What would they do with them? Enjoy!

@Davemk1You make a fair point, but I actually think that a test drive really isn’t a fair test. All of what you are saying about being small and vulnerable is of course true, but you definitely get used to it and you hopefully develop a defensive driving attitude. Roads and situations that are at first daunting, you quickly forget about as you automatically know what to do to avoid being in people’s blind spots and stuck in traffic etc. The fun of the purely mechanical and completely connected with the car and road experience, even on short drives, are a pretty good way to wipe out the frustrations of daily life in my opinion. There is only so much time to clear bucket list items and I’d say it's better to say “tried it and it wasn’t for me” than regret not having even given it a go. @Randy Flowers, take this however you choose, but I say “go for it.”

@Randy Flowers This is not meant to be a criticism, but you are way over-thinking this. You have gotten great assurances from others about Josh at Rocky Mountain, and he owned the car after R&T and it has been driven a bit since then, so what else is there to worry about with the build and car itself? You have 2 sources of help with repairs and maintenance and you can easily see that Caterhams hold their value pretty well as long as they don’t have horrible histories of wrecks and if you have an accident in it you probably have more to worry about than re-sale value. Buy it before someone else does as you’ve said that it checks all of your boxes as if you ordered it yourself. You will not regret taking ownership off of your bucket list.

Following this as I’m looking too. The small pipes make getting something easily difficult, especially so if you can’t weld yourself! The collector pipe is 1.625 OD. What I have on now is 36” from collector pipe to end. The muffler itself is 19 1/2” long and 2 3/4” diameter. My guess is that a good exhaust shop willing and able to make something is going to be needed. Could be that if there are a couple of us looking a couple could be made up but shipping could make that plan not worthwhile.

I have a new spare nosecone that I bought years ago and have never used. If you can give me some measurements of what you have and what you are looking for I'll check it to see if it is what you are looking for. It's yellow like in your photo and looks similar. It measures about 26 inches from front to the back of the shelf, 24" from the front to the front of the shelf.

Thanks. I came across that info once before but couldn’t find it again.

Does anyone have a recommendation on where in the US to have Weber DCOE’s rebuilt?

I have the B6 Caterham cut seats in my S3. With the tunnel cover in my car, they were still a bit wide and I needed to grind a bit of additional material off of the sides for them to fit. I find them comfortable, but my wife and son not so much. Perhaps I have more built on padding. They will be a little lower in the car if you skip using the adjustable rails and bolt directly to the floor which I would recommend as moving them forward and back isn’t very easy anyway once the rails get any grit and stones in them and the actual range of movement isn’t much.

@theDreamerAt the risk of getting the Seven Club folks offended, I wouldn’t get overly worked up over waiting to join the club. If you’re not in the UK and are unable to attend their events and drives, you may not ultimately feel the benefit of their forum and newsletter worth the cost. There is some older stuff in their forum relating to the Vauxhall but nothing earth shattering or that you couldn’t get answered on here or in the C20XE group on FB. Good that you got the original HPC nose badge as I think they’re pretty hard to find now. Congrats on getting your car - you’re going to love it.

Here’s another thought…Perhaps just buy the hardware and then get some plexiglas and you can do whatever shape, size and hardware position works best on the car. Thinking shaped for a windscreen mounted mirror or differently for a scuttle mounted mirror. Also gets rid of the Cobra embossing.

Thanks! After you get them mounted, posting pics of how it works out would be really helpful and appreciated. Interestingly, my car has some holes drilled in the windscreen probably from having something like this mounted in the past. The guy I bought the car from bought the windscreen from someone and didn’t know any details.

I’m curious, can you post where the sun visors are from?

Wow. That is an incredibly well thought out set-up. Who makes that? I’m sure it costs more than I’m willing to pay to replace my standard top, but it looks like a great way to go if you need to buy everything.

Check, if I remember correctly you can put some washers or spacers in to move the brake pedal a bit further away from the gas pedal. I could be wrong though, haven't fussed with it in a while. I left a comment on BAT during the auction about being interested in the spare wheels and extra transmission and that remains true. Enjoy the car - for sure you're going to love it. My car is a Vauxhall also, on carbs.

Here’s Josh at Rocky Mountain Caterham’s summary which I think is really well thought out… "Ah, the old harness question! For a street Seven driven occasionally on the track... well... it depends mainly on (i) what your track and/or trackday organization requires, and (ii) how your Seven is currently configured. There is one absolute universal rule, however: no 4-point harnesses on track. Most tracks will specifically allow either 3 point inertia reel belts *or* 5/6 point harnesses with anti-submarine straps, but not in between. If a track makes no mention of prohibiting 4-point harnesses, it is still not a good idea to run them on track. If your track and/or trackday organizer requires SFI/FIA dated belts that are in-date, then you'll need to have those installed. (The USA7s.net NJMP even is an example of this requirement.) The 6-point options we typically recommend are the Caterham specific Schroth race harnesses, or the Sabelt 622 formula belts, which are the two that we use and install on our Sevens. In all cases, it is important to order harnesses with the webbing through the tab -- and not the snap-hooks as you'd use in a sedan or production. Be careful when ordering as most harnesses are snap-link by default. This mounting tab allows the use of the Caterham chassis bosses and mounting hardware. We typically spec 2" belts, or at least 2" shoulder belts, in order to be HANS compatible. We do pull-down shoulder belts and pull-up lap belts, with the crutch straps routing up through sewn loops on the lap straps and being secured where the shoulder belts enter the camlock buckle. If you have lowered floors you'll likely need to get the spacers to allow mounting the crutch straps to the chassis tabs that are at the bottom of the rear bulkhead. (The lap and shoulder belts use the existing 7/16 chassis bosses). If your track and/or trackday organizer does NOT require dated harnesses, but does require a 5/6 point harness with anti-submarine straps, one option you have is to convert your existing Luke-type Caterham 4-point harness to 6 point by using the Caterham crutch strap conversion kit. This only works if you have the Luke-type 4-point belts with the camlock buckle: you can check if your harnesses will accept the 2 point crutch straps as they will have a slot on the bottom of the camlock for the crutch strap to plug into. (Caterham did have a UK "road" 4-point harness that had a standard type spring-button buckle -- these are for road use only and cannot be converted to a 6-pointer.) If your track is like our home track (High Plains Raceway) and allows open lapping with either a 3-point inertia reel belt, or a 5/6 point harness, then you have a choice depending on how your Seven is currently specced. If you have the 4-point camlock harnesses, we would add the Caterham crutch strap conversion kit. If you have the leather seats, by the way, the crutch straps run up around the back of the removable bottom bolster and you sit on the straps -- some folks just tuck the crutch straps out of the way under the bolster when not doing trackdays... not that we necessarily advocate that! For anything more than occasional track days we would go to SFI/FIA dated 6-point harnesses as soon as feasible. By the way, we use and advocate arm restraints whenever out on track in a Seven. It's a very cost-effective way to ensure your friends won't ever bestow upon you the nickname, "Stumpy." Hopefully this helps with your questions... let me know if I missed any detail questions and I can share anything else we know. Finally, the dreaded-but-necessary disclaimer when discussing any safety equipment: all this should not be gospel. Ultimately it will be your responsibility to determine the rules and requirements that apply to you, and how to comply with them. But this may help further map out some of the paths available in staying strapped to your Seven as you hurtle round track. Josh Robbins Rocky Mountain Caterham”

I’ll reach out to him tomorrow!

This is a really interesting and important topic. From reading a little bit on this over the years and having installed harnesses when I put Tillets in my car, the “solution” for a street car driven occasionally on the track, would be 3 inch shoulder straps, crotch straps that loop through the lap belts, pull up on the lap belts (there isn’t enough space to adjust pull downs when in the car) and pull down on the shoulder straps, with bolt in ends and all sized for our cars, with FIA labels on them. Perhaps one of the US dealers could coordinate a package, or perhaps we could put together a group interested to put together a group order and buy. I’d be interested in driver and passenger side and am willing to make some calls if someone car help with hammering down the specifics needed.

Just ordered one!

Craig, I think at mid to low 20's you're going to sell the car very quickly! Take a look at values on Bring-A-Trailer which are probably top of the market, but seemingly an easy place sell. My suggestion is to sort it out, drive it more and you'll get younger and decide to keep it. You get used to and addicted to the driving experience.

Sorry, I can’t help with the slave cylinder information. As I said, the original owner had the dry sump kit but never installed it. My car is still running the wet sump and a cable clutch since it is really street use now, so I haven’t felt compelled to install the dry sump yet. The parts I have with the dry sump stuff are plain boxed so I can’t help with their source.

Coincidentally, I just today received an email from Holden that they have a reproduction of the Lucas switch https://www.holden.co.uk/p/lucas-31250-self-cancelling-vacuum-indicator-switch-1?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=week4_holden&utm_content=lucas_switch

@jordwayhere’s a pic of the new style Caterham badge. I forgot that there are locating pins on the back. and @TMRL7 here’s the Lotus badge