Austin David

Redline is the go-to recommendation, but Royal Purple is also respected. Honestly for a NA car with half the weight, you probably won't be putting too much load on that geartrain so pretty much anything will be great.

3500 miles in, some answers. Mostly "stop thinking this behaves like a car." For "spirited" street use, 2/4 seems about right; 1/4 is pushy / understeer, 3/4 is a little extra fun / oversteer. I understand it's easy enough to induce oversteer at any setting, but 2/4 is natural. I have not tested the higher "S" mounting locations. There is very little body roll in this setting. Roll steer is there, but not significant; I sort of have to hunt for it, honestly. Certainly not enough roll action that I feel like I would want to add linkages to my rear arms.

When you can bleed it. Which might be *after* the parking brake goes in... which is pretty late in the Caterham process. The risk is that if you have to open a sealed system, you have to basically dump 1-2qts of fluid to bleed it again.

to be fair it's not a question of uncomfortable, but more comfortable. In SC we have protracted and unpredictable spring/fall cycles. Hard Winter is usually a few nonconsecutive weeks, wrapped by a series of false fall / spring events on both sides. I'm OK with gear for road trips, but this is 95% grocery-getter and I don't want to have to pull out "layers" just to run out and get the milk.

my booty gets cold, and is protected from the influx of tunnel-heat. This way I can toast my butt *and* my forelegs.

It's that time, in SC. For what it's worth the blower/core is pretty amazing but it takes a solid 10 minutes to warm up enough to make the core effective. When the engine is HOT I have to put the plunger mostly back in (minimal heat flow to the core), it gets hot in there. Did you ever run heaters in your seats? I have used a kit like this one for a different car: https://leatherseats.com/shop/seat-comfort/seat-heaters/dual-control-switch-seat-heater/ Installation (99 Miata) was not hard. My cat seats might be annoying tho -- the back is crimped on, but the bottom / pan is glued so I assume I'll have to basically unglue the cover, then hope to be successful stretching & reattaching it.

It came that way? Like a DRUM.

I added lighting to the rollbar uprights. I'm not 100% sold on these, but they were cheap and easy and they look pretty good. The mounts are temporary, if it ever stops raining I'll put some miles on them and see how they do. The goal is visibility, secondary I want them to not get in the way and work if I (shudder) have to use the hood. I actually made a much more complex setup, but went "quick n dirty" for this first pass. I used a set of 4-pin econoseal plugs to make a splice-in extension / harness, it goes between the tail lights and the chassis loom. The lights are spliced directly into this harness, fed up through the floor of the boot, then routed over to the rollbar. Wiring up the econoseal was the most annoying part of the project, honestly. The lights themselves are an amazon special, $11 run/brake/turn extension. I bought two of these, and wired the turn signal to the "right" side; in this mount it's the top 1/3rd of the strip. In daytime these are merely bright. I need to figure out if they're too obnoxious at night. in the pics below only the parking/running lights are on; the brakelight is BRIGHT.

Get yourself near Charleston, SC and you can sit in my S3. At 200# I think you'll be an S3 + lowered floors kinda guy. 100% agree you should sit in one first.

I'm surprised when I find someone who knows what it is. But yeah, always a conversation (or 3) when I stop.

At the suggestion of another builder, I secured the o2 sensor line with a bracket in place of one of the body rivets, beside the catalyst. My kit had a few leftover tie brackets and rivets, I just had to drill out a painted one. I also retaped some of the heat shield which got chewed up on that side.

I'm gonna try it disconnected, but I don't expect to learn much. It runs great in all cases except this "stab from idle," where it's noticably worse cold, but still always present.

it's the greatest car in the world, they gotta make you sweat it a little.

well dang, that's a great find! You gonna come tool around the BRP with us later this fall?

I was able to find a local source (Josh @ Rocky Mtn) but I also modeled and printed one today while I was sposed to be paying attention in meetings. The original unit is relatively weak, now that I've had to look at it. Hopefully the next one will live a bit longer, but this temporary stand-in oughta work well enough

I noticed my backup light lens was ... missing. No other evident damage. It looks like it just snapped off at the two screwposts, both sides were shorn at the screw head -- I had the clear "posts" left under the screws, but no lens, and no evident damage around it. Bulb and reflector are intact. I assume it happened while zipping around town on errands in the last ~ day. I have a photo of the car from a week ago showing the lens intact. I see a few posts like https://www.caterhamlotus7.club/forum/rear-fog-lamp-lens, seems this is not uncommon ... especially on the fuel fill side. I won't say mine's never gotten any fuel on it, but the break didn't show any chemical damage so idk. The lens wasn't particularly tight either, in fact I don't think I've put a screwdriver to the two cover screws.

Took me two mos in SC. You're very lucky!

Not sure. Mine already kisses the bonnet on the left rear corner, where the main harness plugs in.

If you're they type who would dump lights for weight, probably dump the cove too. Personally I'll use it, but definitely want to make sure it's not pressing on important wires

Yep, I have the same sticker dust.

thanks for the heads up. If only there were some sort of international network of these forums, so members of one could have privileges in all

Yeah, I saw that post -- it's what got me poking at the TPS. I have no other negative issues than the lag when poked. Otherwise it pulls smooth and strong and is a delight at street RPMs when my wife is watching. That is, it's very smooth and well-behaved when needed. I can try backing the idle down a bit to build more vac, see if that changes anything.

Thanks. I pulled my cover today and removed the grommet for now. It was definitely close, not sure if it was under a lot of pressure but easy enough to prevent. I might fashion a rain cover if I get boreder.

I've got a bit under 3k miles on this 360 duratec. Stock plenum and airbox, paper filter, 360 cams. Some video of the behavior: Cold / Hot Basically there's a noticable throttle lag, a little worse when cold. It doesn't really appear when I roll on, and it's fine at WOT, though I haven't put it on a dyno. But it's fast as sh*rt so I don't think anything significant is wrong. I tried resetting the ECU to reset TPS. I also tried rotating the TPS a little forward and back, that didn't help the stab and it made idle worse. I've also put a K&N cone on the TB, same sucking behavior / throttle lab. I mathed it out, the cone had the same surface area as the paper so I kept the stock airbox in place while I work on the WAF for RBTB. Any ideas what's going on? And most importantly, is there an easy adjustment that doesn't involve flashing the ECU?

Catching up on this based on our chat yesterday. The problem you described (and showed me) seemed like a potential issue for *all* duratec cars, mine included. Could you describe the fix and maybe a shot of the wiring under the coil cover? You drive harder than I probably ever will, but the fix seems easy enough that I'm gonna just do it proactively. I've also read that tucking the coil wires might help keep that cover off my bonnet, so I mean to get in this weekend and see if I can clean it up, and prevent this "broken #4 plug wire" issue.