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Hey papak, did you ever upgrade the ECU ? If so, to what?

@JohnCh, I got a bit more info from the previous owner. Looks like I'm only the third owner. The first owner never really drove it, hence the 500 miles. It was sold in mid 2018 to my friend the last owner, and he used it as a daily driver and put 32K miles on it. When it was sold in 2018, it already had the Duratec 2.3L. The bit about Zetec in the Hillbank ad is just pure B.S. Presumably, the car was built from the start with the Duratec.

Thanks all for welcoming me to the community! I really appreciate the feedback and pointers. Hope to meet some of you in person soon. I especially appreciate the reception given that I didn't build the Seven myself. I always wanted to build one, but I never found the time. I have built some automotive stuff in the past, though, including the Exomotive Exocet pictured below and an electric go-kart for my kid. At the start of Covid I also started building an electric Austin Mini (and trying to document the build at http://evmini.info), but some life & job changes have progress on that on hold for now. I'm attaching images of where I stopped, in case somebody is interested in checking it out. I'm looking forward to getting my Seven sweet and smooth, and better than new, with your help.

Found the ECU, which is an MBE 967. It's pretty far up under the dash, but the wiring all looks very neat. Seems like the tuning software is still available, which is great. If by Woody, you mean some wood in the frame/dashboard, I'm not spotting any of that so far.

Thanks for the link! That's definitely something I'll have to do. The ITBs in those docs are newer than the ones I have, though (e.g., mine still use the stock injector locations). I'll get in touch with SBD to try to find an earlier version if the current guides don't work for me. That's a great idea, and probably the easiest way to assess any real damage. The oil pressure when the engine is fully warmed up is a bit lower than I'd like, which I was thinking of remedying with a heavier-weight oil. Changing the oil and seeing how quickly it gets dirty would be a tell as well, I guess (or even sending it out for analysis). Thanks for the offer! I may take you up on that, depending on what happens.

I'd love to see the Cosworth version of the engine. If it turns out I need to do major engine work, I might as well proactively satisfy some upgrade-itis.

@johnch yes, the ITBs are stamped SBD. The last owner is a colleague who daily drove the car to work for the last five years. I don't know the ownership before him. The car has about 33k miles right now.

Thanks Andy! I'm on the peninsula by Mountain View, but I'd be happy to make the trip to compare the setup. For example, I haven't been figure out where the ECU is, or whether it's the stock one or not. This car has seen over 20K miles without filters on the ITBs, so I'm assuming that worst case I'll have to have the engine torn apart and rebuilt. But I'm OK with that. Just want to make the car as nice as I can, and fiddling is most of the fun anyway, imho. FWIW: The air filter that I have looks pretty much like the one in the picture below.

Thanks for the quick response, @Vovchandr and @sltous ! The engine is indeed a 2.3L Ford Duratec! More specifically a 2003 1G271AA, which seems associated with the Ford Ranger. After you suggested I take a closer look, I managed to get a view of the side of the block and the stamping made it unambiguous. Thanks for the help! Yes, the car was originally sold via Hillbank (this is the ad https://www.hillbankusa.com/vehicles/329/2003-caterham-seven-clubsport). That ad says 1.8L Zetec, and that's what the previous owner had told me. I just started using the car last week, so hadn't thought to second-guess that. The previous owner was not much of a car guy, and he had a habit of driving without any filters on the ITBs. I am presuming there are lots of carbonized bugs and vegetation in the cylinders and that's one of the reasons it's running rough. However, I must admit that I didn't put the air filter on when going up to Alice's this weekend... I figured that one more trip wouldn't do much damage, since I'll have to have work done anyway. Thanks also for the pointers to TrackSpec and Kampena. I had found TrackSpec already, but Kampena hadn't come up in my Googling.

I finally made the jump and got a Caterham after a long string of other light-weight sports cars. Mine is a 2003 1.8L Zetec 2.3L Duratec/Mazda in Prisoner garb, as seen in the pic. The car has been in the SF Bay Area for a while with a previous owner, but he was moving out of country and it's getting a good new home with me. I drove up to Alice's Restaurant last weekend, and it was a blast. I'm looking forward to being part of this community, and would love to get in touch with other Caterham owners in the SF Bay Area. In particular, if somebody can recommend a good shop to give the Ford Zetec engine a going over, this would be great. It's running rough and I need to use starter spray on the intakes to get it running when the engine is cold.