James A

There is a NASA race at COTA on May 27 and 38 come on out there will be at least one 7 in the HPDE. Learn about the four step HPDE and multi-step Time Trial programs, they are great ways to get on a variety of tracks and if you choose can lead up to a comp license. If you make it out stop by and say hi, we are driving this at this race, but normally race a CAterham 7.

Robert, is this the uprated T9, does it have the small 3 bolt cover that is under the input shaft?

We will be racing this next weekend:

Tom, My son and I race Caterhams but will be running an NP01 at COTA next weekend. We have not run the Caterhams in NASA yet, only SCCA as E production cars but will be racing them in NASA soon as SCCA has so legislated Caterhams that we simply can't compete on a national basis anymore. Really the SCCA has become the Mazda Car Club of America it seems, so we will give NASA a try with our Caterham. We will look you up next weekend and would love to hear about the level of preparation your car has and the class you run in. Jim

I assume these are track only tires for you, if so R7s are a better choice in my opinion. You will get excellent wear on the R7s, excellent for such a soft tire, and they are fantastic in terms of communication and progressive break away. Now the R7s are designed for a variety of cars so they are not specific to a very light weight car, but I find them perfect for the Caterham. They are readily available from TireRack since the SM7 is a spec tire that I think are designed for a little more longevity, but still a terrific tire, I just don't know how they would be on a Caterham, I do know they feel good on a Spec Miata.

I can't imagine you can remove the speedo drive with the gearbox in the car, but once it is out you can install a speedo blank which is available from Quantum Mechanics, john@quantumechanics.com . The leak is from a small seal that the speedo shaft goes though.

My answer is that it completely depends on the tire!

I am in The Woodlands and would be happy to stop by some time and take a look, I have built and rebuilt a number of Caterhams including an SV. None of these issues are too difficult to deal with, where in the Houston area are you? Jim

There is really nothing very hard about a gearbox overhaul, you must have circlip pliers, a 36MM 12 point socket, snap ring pliers, gear pullers, and the usual assortment of hand tools. You can download a shop manual from the link in my original post and it is pretty good except it does not cover some aspects of the heavy duty box. Take lots of pictures as it comes apart, use the manual and know that your first attempt will result in some rework.

For years we had a local source to service T9s here in Texas, but he recently retired, and I was getting little tired of gearboxes lasting less than a racing season so I decided to do my own overhauls. The first gearbox I did never wanted to go in to 5th and that was right after a very expensive rebuild. It turns out the company that did the work used the wrong 5th gear blocker bars and springs, yep the wrong ones! I recently finished my second box that had the 3rd gear synchro teeth broken off and I have to say it was very straight forward, I found really good parts support through Quantum Mechanics in Connecticut, and a lot of on line support info here: http://topdocsracing.com/pdf-links and with those two sources I dove in. The first box was a little slow and I had to redo some assembly work, but the second box was a snap. Now I am on to my third box which has one race on it and began popping out of third gear. I can see what is wrong but getting to the third gear will require that I disassemble the box. It's pretty amazing that I am doing in a few hours and for $200 - $300 what I was paying $1500 for, and it's fun. Oh one other note, the largest supplier of T9 parts in the UK refuses to sell to the USA, it's really very odd, I even said I will have a freight forwarder pick up the parts and export them and they said they were not interested. OK, next I am changing a differential ratio and installing a Titan LSD, I've found the shop manual and a parts source for the Ford7" diffs also.

I have seen a replacement chassis imported as replacement/spare parts, no vehicle paperwork needed, just customs. Chassis came from Arch Motors and was no different than shipping engine or suspension parts over.

What a wonderful project!

I have seen a Caterham in Tom's shop and the work was beautiful, it had a Zetec in it.

1turbofocus, Tom, has a lot of experience with forced induction on the Zetec and knows his way around Caterhams and other 7 derivatives. Reach out to him and see what he says.

I agree on the 4.1 ratio and that is what we will be using most of the time, I was going to put he 3.97 in a spare diff. If you are interested in selling the 4.1 I am interested in buying it! Just PM me with the details. Thank you Mike!

Anyone have a 3.92:1 crown wheel and pinion for a Sierra 7" diff they would like to sell? I see multiple sources in the UK but wonder if there are some sitting in a corner here in the US.

The last time the Runoffs were at Mid-Ohio in 2005 a Caterham 7 won E Production, driven by Kim Knapp.

The new style ears and a solid web of aluminum in place of the large hole where you see the crack, I have to believe that is a more robust design.

I was doing some routine maintenance a few months back and notice a crack in one of the DeDion ears. These are the old style ears on a 14 year old car that has extensive autocross and a moderate amount of track time on it. Yeah, we have had a failure of a DeDion ear on our race car and it is not something that ends well. Take a look if you have the kind of rear suspension that uses the aluminum ears that bolt to the end of the DeDion tube!

For the muffler you might consider these people: http://www.coastfab.com/ultra-lightweight-racing-mufflers.html I can tell you they are not cheap but you can tell them the ends you want on the muffler, the space available for the muffler and the db you want coming out of the muffler and they will make it. Obviously there are some limitations, but we had one made for our EP race car and they delivered exactly what we needed. And their mufflers are very light weight, 304 stainless and repackable. I drew a hand sketch with dimensions, they sent back a drawing with estimate and it was here in three weeks. Ours cost $645 but if you can use a standard design they are much less expensive.

Richard, as Paul says there is an active 7 crowd in Houston including at least 6 people who race them in SCCA and a far larger group that does regular track days. I am in The Woodlands and have an E Production race car and street legal autocross car. I built the street legal car from scratch and have rebuilt the race car twice, completely rebuilt it including the engine.

Yikes, that's a real crap show on the part of ATL! I wonder if the difference in experience was where the original cell came from? Mine was from ATL from new, was yours a Caterham supplied unit? In any event not a great showing by ATL.

Wow, I am surprised to hear of this issue with ATL, I had to opposite experience with them. I had to replace the bladder on our race car. They were very responsive I talked with an engineer at length and ask them to modify the pick-up versus the old bladder. They did a dimensioned drawing showing the modifications I ask for an additional change, they resent the changed drawing and I approved it and they manufactured the new bladder. I also had an extra set of all gaskets shipped with it, total $1342 delivered. Now, this was a year and a half ago, maybe they have regarded in their service quality, but my experience was first rate.

Also, Caterham makes fuel cells for their cars, here is the SV model: http://www.caterhamparts.co.uk/category.php?id_category=630

ATL makes a fuel cell for Caterhams here: http://atlinc.com/racing.html it is 14 gallons. Oh, page 23 of the catalog.