Croc

I like the prospect for being closer than NJMP or Monticello. Starting construction in 2012 though.

Still my plan unless the weather gods deem otherwise

hi Bruce :seeya: I figured that would wake you up. Don't worry, Wil had no plans to let me loose in it! Will I see you at the open day?

I don't know about the rest of the country but the NYC region has been blessed this weekend with gorgeous weather. Karl and I got our cars out yesterday for a drive in NY state only to discover that everyone else is out enjoying the day as well. I think of it as a normal California driving day - gorgeous weather and jammed up traffic. Our litany of traffic jams was: Rt 17 north Perkins Drive at Bear Mountain Park Palisades Parkway leading onto Bear Mountain Bridge Rt 218 closed Newburgh (now this is one scary town) Rt 6 exit off the I-87 Rt 17A At this point we gave up and decided to head to a bar. Parking lot was full of bikes so they turned us away. The one highlight was visiting Orange County Choppers of TV fame. They had a Ford Mustang Club event on. So we drive in to the place and see two signs - spectators and show cars. So we headed down the show cars area. Karl does a victory lap in the roundabout to show off and I head off down to park next to the Mustangs. :cooldude: We sort of stole the show as everyone came over to check us out. They liked our cars once I said we had Ford engines. Despite the crap driving, I had a great day in the sun. Did not think about work once and had zero stress. I hope everyone else enjoyed themselves this weekend.

Jon and Jude - Thanks for the comments. What you are seeing is not the dry sump swirl tank but the oil catch tank for excess oil blown off. The dry sump tank is not shown in the picture. There is only one hose leading in to the catch tank as it just collects and the vapors vent through the 3 small holes at the top. The hose is rated for oil/fuel/water. I was not going to let myself make the same mistake again! As for the hose clamp, I found it does not need it. The standard Caterham fitting is a heater hose shoved in a hole "burned" into the side of a washer bottle. The hose never comes out of that bodged solution by Caterham, yet it had no secure connection. There is a lot of oil being blown around from the end of the hose but not a lot of pressure as the catch tank vents the air.

Its easy, just ring Tilton http://tiltonracing.com/content.php?page=prosmenu and explain what you need - length, diameter, etc and they will spec it for you. I have used them before and found them to be very helpful.

It is a Moroso tank that needed to have a segment cut out and rewelded as it was too high. It was surprisingly difficult to find a catch tank that was low enough height and fit the space. I looked at a lot of designs but all were too large for the space in some way.

Exoticars at Milford NJ is holding an open day on Sunday October 16. I use them for some of my maintenance work and anyone who has seen Bruce Bowker's superb collection will attest to the quality of work that Exoticars does. http://exoticars-usa.com/2011/fall-open-house-10162011/ Bruce's Jag was at the shop today being cleaned up ready for him to return next week. I did offer to take it for a test drive...... Other cars in the shop today included Aston Martin DBS, Aston Martin Lagonda, a couple of Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Wil's Maserati 300M recreation in progress. His customers have some of the most unique cars around so it will be an interesting day. I will definitely be there if the weather is good to us.

And the winner is Bob! All hoses were pulled off the car from master cylinder down to each wheel and tested in the CSI boffin lab. They were of two types: (a) stainless braided hoses at each wheel. (b) some rubbery looking ones at the brake fluid reservoir mounted on the scuttle. The bad hoses were the nonbraided black hoses (3 of them) at the brake fluid reservoir. They were Buna N hoses and clearly wrong spec. They can be seen in this photo running along the foreground of the engine bay up to the reservoir mounted on the scuttle. http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a354/mjohnson555/seats/CSR/Colorado%20April%202011/DSC_5414_edited-1.jpg The stainless ones were found to be fine but I replaced them out of caution as I was not in a trusting mood. I used Tilton as my source for replacements. The replacements are shown in the following photo: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a354/mjohnson555/seats/CSR/October%202011/DSC_1994_edited-1.jpg I lost some paint off the car from where the leaking fluid ate it up but I will take that as a battle scar that could have been much worse. The scary bit of this story is that these hoses may not be an isolated occurrence and may be part of a bad batch in late 2010. It would not be limited to new kits but could also be older cars that sourced replacements during this period. I would encourage anyone with a Caterham seven to give an extra inspection in this area.

and 10) A Reverie carbon diffuser. This turned into a major ordeal instead of the bolt on solution that it was initially presented as. Caterham supplied the CSR drawings to Reverie who then developed a diffuser kit. However, the drawings were incomplete and Reverie did not allow for the independent rear suspension to deflect under load. So the angle grinder came out to cut out the suspension holes. I then used some thin ali to finish off fairing in the chassis underneath. The CSR is not like the other Caterhams as a lot of the chassis underneath is already faired in. This should make it cleaner when I go off track excursions next time! Also the standard reversing light and rear fog light from a Caterham were removed and the bright LED solution from Car Builder Solutions were mounted on the back of the car. Far smaller profile and look nicer.

Well I have been busy putting some modifications on the car: 1) New carbon chin spoiler. This comes with the CSR kit as is part of the aero downforce package. Personally, I just think they are so nice to give it a double chin look that matches me! 2) New oil temp sensor. The car always ran oil temps too high for my liking around 110-120 on highway runs at 80mph or on track. This was despite having the a modine-type cooler. A lot of this was due to heat soak around the original sensor location at the filter. The sump plug was tapped with a sensor to get a true read on oil temps. On a nice high speed run today for an hour the oil temps now show a very steady 95-100 degrees. Much better. 3) A nice shiny oil catch tank to replace the plastic washer bottle kit solution that dripped oil into the pedal box. No more oily feet! 4) A diff oil catch tank. Should stop the dripping that happened on the last track day. 5) New brake hoses to replace the fautly ones. 6) Finally fitted the Reverie carbon cam cover. 7) Fitted the carbon aeroscreen instead of the windscreen. 8) Carbon block tail lights 9) A supercharger (where's Karl? :jester:)

Another idea is to upload the images to a free photo hosting website like Photobucket/Picasa/Webshots/etc and then just link the uploaded photos/embed images to this post. Currently, you have attached the images as files on USA7s and our forum has limits on size of files that can be attached. Hope this helps.

Very similar to my first seven except mine was a 1965. This has had some nice work done on it - upgraded ignition and gearbox I would have loved to have back in the early 1990s when I was racing. Looks like he has the same BMC engine that I used except that he has ported it which should make it sweeter running. Not sure where the wheels are from but they look nicer than the standard steel solid ones that I had. Very tempting but alas no point going back to those days, I am twice the man I used to be and a BMC 948cc ain't going to shift me around. :svengo:

I think the Nology light is the Omex one rebranded? looks otherwise the same.

I am ok for Sat Oct 29 or Sun Oct 30 I hope it does not rain like the June day did!

I was actually thinking of this google page: http://www.google.com/search?q=new+england+classics+complaints&hl=en&prmd=ivnsm&ei=IZaNTs2AKoTx0gGIz_kY&sa=N&oq=New+England+Classics%22&aq=1&aqi=g3g-v7&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=6282l6282l0l8954l1l1l0l0l0l0l234l234l2-1l1l0

You may want to google this place first before going closer....

Most people do not appreciate this but insurance is state regulated. This means that each company has to be licensed in each state to do busines, file premium rating plans, state reporting, etc. A lot of the difficulty on getting insurance comes from the company not being licensed in a specific state to be able to write that form of policy. The other catch is that Hagertys is not an insurance company. They are an insurance broker front that relies on a cooperating insurance company carrier behind to offer the policy. The big question is which state are you in? Of the main line insurers, State Farm, Chubb, and Liberty/Safeco are the most flexible but it depends on the state. Hagertys and American Collectors as others point out are generally helpful (subject to the state again). For me Grundys was more helpful as their policy wording was less restrictive. My prior seven was done with State Farm but they would not touch the current one. Always make the time to read the policy restrictions with these types of policies (e.g. garage construction requirements - floor, roof, walls; use of the car at shows/events, mileage limitations, flood zone rating, weekends away from home, etc.). The policies all vary substantially by individual state. So the policy I read for NJ is not anything like the policy that I might be given in Colorado or Illinois. Unfortunately, I only offer insurance for oil rigs that go boom in the gulf and not cars - would have made my own life much easier!

Maybe. I need to give Caterham opportunity to respond as Dave rightly pointed out. Steps I am taking are: 1) Friendly heads up here plus confirm my suspicions. 2) Trusted mechanic inspected and confirmed Bob's diagnosis this morning. 3) The CSI boffins we use for technical insurance claims have the brake lines and the fluid sample and I will wander around to them later today for the lab report. 4) Talk with Caterham and give them a chance to get the message out. You want one of these or similar: [email=http://www.harborfreight.com/brake-bleeder-and-vacuum-pump-kit-92474.html]http://www.harborfreight.com/brake-bleeder-and-vacuum-pump-kit-92474.html[/email] Wish I had one years ago.

I got the vmail at Caterham USA and left a message. I am having a race car engineer look at them to confirm diagnosis as well.

Yes - I have one of those too but I think I will live.

Bob - Thanks for the technical explanation - this makes perfect sense now. I am useless on the technical properties of the materials being used but I instinctively know when I think I have a problem. I am troubled by the potential for other new kit owners to be blissfully unaware of a problem like this all because of a bad batch of hoses not manufactured to the correct specs. Steve/Martin - Thanks for your thumbs up on Goodridge and Wilwood. I will look at them closer today.

You better be in your seven or I will put another rainbow sticker on the back of your miata! :jester:

Clearly contaminated fluid is a problem. If you say yours is clean then ok but I am wary of any brake line sweating. I was taught it was a bad thing. I prefer myself to get hot and sweaty instead of my brake lines. Replacements are a toss up between some conventional Raybestos lines or some snazzy looking Wilwood ones. Guess what I will fall for....

Just a friendly heads up to the seven community. I noticed today my brake hoses were sweating brake fluid. On closer inspection they were starting to perish. The fluid was drained to find it full of small black flakes suspended in the fluid, I guess coming from the inside of the hose. Given this was a newly constructed car in March and has only done 1100 miles in 6 months, I guess Caterham UK specc'ed the kit with the wrong hoses for the brakes - a bit disappointing and of obvious concern given I did 2 track days with them in July. Even if you have not replaced your brake hoses lately, you may want to give your hoses a good inspection for signs of brake fluid sweating. New brake hoses coming up for me....:leaving: