Gene_W

So we are "done". Car is running and driving, but not too much distance given our basic string alignment. As it seems everyone has, we have a tach problem. Tach will move a bit but maxes out about 700rpm. We are. also chasing down a headlight issue on one of the LED headlights we spec'd on the car. Other gauges seem to work, but with 5 gal of fuel the gas gauge is only showing just over a 1/4 tank, but Im not overly concerned about that. Clutch seems good. Brakes seem a bit overly firm so probably need to bleed again. We have two black wire spade connectors that were wrapped in the packaging of headlight connectors that do not have a place to go that we can find. Im thinking they would connect to the oil tank if we had one, but we have a wet sump car. Any thoughts appreciated. Unfortunately we are now going to go dark for a couple of months due to my son's work schedule and some other plans so it may be a bit before we get the remaining small items done and get the car registered. Really appreciate the Texas guide done by the Houston member and we will be following that. We have some experience with the Kendall County tax office in moving other vehicles in from out of state so fingers crossed they will be easy to work with.

Yes, please let me know on wing mirrors. I was sent some wing mounts but it is impossible to get the mirrors mounted because of the internal screws and the fact the glass is glued in so I am going to have to find another solution. thx

No windshield sits 3-4 mm away from front bar of cage.

Big week for us last week. Car is basically finished. Brakes and clutch bled. Followed the advice of disabling immobilizer to crank for oil pressure then once that was done and reset car started after about 4-5 attempts. Good oil pressure but haven’t run it enough to check temp gauge. Need to do a rough alignment before a test drive. We didn’t pay enough attention to alignment in the front suspension build phase and we are clearly way off on toe in and camber. As it seems everyone does we are chasing a couple of electrical gremlins. One of the LED headlights is an issue. Other is fine and signal and hazards work fine. Once we chase it down a bit more will likely come back to the group for some advice. Missing a couple small parts related to wing mirrors and waiting on roll cage additional brake light. Decided to go with classic Caterham race light style. Will likely get nose and bonnet on next week and will post completed picture.

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Thanks for the advice on cooling. Got it figured out. My car did not come with any heater so no need to cap, just run line that includes temp sensor from oil cooler through a routing behind the head where you create a route for the submarine to the normal entry point of the submarine line. Photo below of engine installed. We were concerned about difficulty and time, but we did some test lifts playing with angles and distances and were able to get the install done in three hours. I think the key for us was having some high jack stands and an engine hoist that had good reach. I had seen a a lot of discussion about protecting the heat shielding in the tunnel and difficulties removing whatever was used. We ordered some flexible plastic sheeting just a few mils thick. Think of the type of office chair mat, but much thinner. We wrapped it over the top of the transmission tunnel in a u shape and just taped to hold. It did not impede entry and once we got things in position it was easy to pull out right before we installed the transmission brace. We still haven't received our roll cage. It has been a comedy of errors with Caterham not sending, then due to confusion giving ours to a car being built in the factory and then a supposed difficulty getting another from the fabricator. As of this moment we are waiting on confirmation that they are sending. They have told Josh they are going to air freight directly to me. I remain skeptical. Josh has been great through the whole thing, but we are very close to hitting a point where we can't go further without redoing things later so that is a bit frustrating.

Anyone have some photos of plumbing on a wet sump car with no heater? Seems fairly intuitive, but none of the blogs or manuals seems to show a heater delete car. Just want to make sure of routing and placement of temp sensor. thx

Congrats. I am also building a 360R. Maybe just a bit behind you as my adult son and I are only working when he is off work. We are also about to a point where are stymied due to the fact that Caterham did not mount or send our roll cage. Still waiting to hear when it will be here. Don't want to mount stuff then have to take it off to get roll cage on.

I ended up in approximately the same place. Around $7-8K additional. Apparently when the engines came in for the cars in the same shipment, one customs inspector assessed 25% on one engine while another at the same time assessed 15% on the other engine (both 360 engines I think). Ah, government efficiency at work.

Question for the group. Our track day roll cage did not come on the car or with it. According to Josh a mix up at the factory. Regardless, we will not see the cage for a bit. I am wondering what issues I will have or items we will have to uninstall if we just move forward. I have seen in the build guides and some of the blogs that if I put the rear dampers on before the cage that we will have to take them off to install the cage. Any other "gotchas" we should be aware of on the cage side? thanks

Thanks very much for doing this. I hope to be finished with my build shortly after the first of the year and on to the title process. I am now in Kendall County so hopefully the smaller town people will be easier to deal with. Moved here from Houston (Harris County). Having dealt with that tax assessors office on other matters, I can't imagine what a nightmare that would have been. Thanks again for the great info.

QUESTION for the group. We have worked about three afternoons in the week we have had the kit. Almost finished with front suspension/steering. Question relates to alignment. Of course I will have the car aligned professionally way down the road, but as we are buttoning up the front do people recommend trying to do some rough camber and toe settings either by thread count or manual level on the rotors? Maybe some other method or is this a waste of time. Thanks. Few photos of our sequence and where we are now. I am happy with progress. Ran into the same issues with hard to reach nuts, fiddly spacers etc., that are referenced in the various build blogs. I am amazed people are able to do most of this build solo. Having two pairs of hands has been critical to us several times. We are now going to go quiet for a few weeks due to schedules so not likely to get much done over the next 2-3 weeks.

So today was a big day. Semi with crates had some issues getting here, but once it arrived the local wrecker guys got the crates out of the semi and onto their rollback and in a few minutes had them dropped in front of my garage door. Had three large crates. One with chassis and seats, wheel arches(wings) nosecone and other assorted items in the cockpit of the car. Crate two was largest and had wheels, transmission, diff and many boxes of parts. Third crate was engine. Based on advice from Josh we had a couple of drills fully charged to break down crates. One slight frustration was that some of crates had screws, some had roofing nails and some had a mix. So it was impact driver for a bit, then crowbar for a bit and on and on. We used an engine hoist strapped to front cross mounts and two people handling the back end to get the chassis in the garage and placed on jack stands. We unloaded the pallet of wheels, parts etc. and placed items on racks we had prepared for this. We took the top and sides off the engine crate which gave us easy access to the lift points on the engine. Kept the base to place the engine on for the time being, lifted the engine with the engine hoist and moved it to a safe place. We are missing our roll cage, but hey from what I read it wouldn't be a Caterham build unless you are missing some big pieces. Hardest part of the entire process was breaking down the crates and getting them to a size small enough to go in our commercial size dumpsters. We ended up at the end of the day with a circular saw just cutting everything into bite size pieces. Entire process with two people (and a third for a half hour to the get the chassis in the garage) took six hours with a few breaks to talk to people who saw the delivery and came over to talk cars. Kudos to Josh for some good prep advice. I am posting a few pictures of the delivery and unload process. Once I do a bit of inventory of the parts (to see what else we are missing) and rearranging, I will shoot some photos of the garage layout.

Thought I would get a new build topic set up as we are anticipating delivery of our kit this week. This is going to be a father/son build that may take a bit longer than normal due to my son's work schedule. I have read and reviewed many of the posts in the build section here as well as some of the other build blogs, but I am sure we will have many questions. We ordered our kit through Josh at RMC who has been great to work with, but I'm sure we will have constant questions for this group. I will try to post some delivery photos and provide a few photo/video updates as we progress.

Appreciate this thread. Will be very interested in your final process and outcome. I'm about to start a build out in the hill country. Luckily there is no emissions testing in my county.