New Build 360R-Texas Hill Country

[Gene_W]

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.

[Gene_W]

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.

[Gene_W]

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.

[IamScotticus]

Can't do much with alignment until you have full weight on the ground, including all fluids and passengers.   

One thing you can do now before the bay gets cluttered is index the true center of the steering rack.  A mark on the shaft now will help you index the steering wheel later. 

It might be interesting to find out now if one side/arm is longer than the other. 

Edited September 18 by IamScotticus

[KnifeySpoony]

I aligned by sight and thread counts and got very close on toe/camber. Here is the before numbers when I took it in for alignment. 

 

 

[MV8]

If the distance to the alignment shop is under 5 miles, I suggest a quick string check of the toe and sight down the side of the car on each side to look at the camber being the same for each side. Excess toe and obviously off camber will quickly feather and taper wear the tires.