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Racing Mind

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Hi from San Diego! My name is Joe and I live in the Mission Hills part of town. It was great meeting Brad (Roll A Seven), Justin (sdcat) and Tom at the Qualcomm autocross this past weekend. I have a CSR Superlight on the way and hope to start the assembly in ~one month. The first pictures of the build came in today, from Dartford:

 

Cat+USA.jpg

 

Cat+USA+1.jpg

 

The base color is Aspen White and the stripes are Ice White, both shamelessly stolen from the Lotus color wheel. The design layout is a reflection of the Caterham Formula One livery.

 

// CSR Superlight

Edited by Racing Mind
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Racing Mind,

 

Shame on you for your unabashed looting of the Lotus color wheel and welcome to the forum. That's a great looking color combo and I look forward to seeing it completed. Here's to daring to be different. :cheers:

Edited by xcarguy
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Here are a few of the options which I have gone with:

 

• Black Pack

• Aero Wishbones

• ATL Kevlar Fuel Bag Tank

• Carbon Fiber Seats w. Alcantara Trim

• Stack Display

• Lowered Floor

• Race 4pt Harness

• Track Day Roll Bar

• Battery Master switch

• Plumbed in Fire Extinguisher

• Carbon Fiber (Unpainted) Rear Cycle Wings

• Sadev Gearbox, AP Racing Sequential Clutch

• AP Racing Brake Bias Valve

 

Stay Tuned!

Joe

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That is quite a spec!

 

Must be fun to tick each and all of the option boxes....!

 

Be sure you clear-coat your c/f rear wings, or they will retain moisture and grow chalky white spots....

 

Did you get c/f wings on just the rear?

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I'm going to start with a dry sumped 2.3 Duratec with Cosworth stage 1 cams. I'm undecided about the paint protection. I've only seen average results with all of the contours on the front end of our cars. Do you have any recommendations?

 

I'm leaning more toward a paint pen to fix any chips which may occur.

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Thanks, guys. Only the fun options were checked! Thanks also for the advice on the carbon. Does that apply for all of the carbon - mirrors, wind deflector, etc?

 

Both the front and rear wing are the unpainted carbon option.

 

Based on my own experience -- yes. I have c/f front and rear wings, rear wing guards, nosecone, mirrors, headlamp buckets, airbox, cam cover, turn indicator pods, dash, and seats -- the works.

 

(The nosecone is painted body color, not clear-coated).

 

The only items i did not have clear-coated were the dash (since it was already installed) and the seats. The dash and seats are probably not so important, since they are not exposed to standing water on a regular basis. The valve cover I could have passed on clear-coating, but did it just for the looks and extra protection. All of the external body parts were clear-coated.

 

And you'd be surprised how much clear-coat the c/f will soak up -- it took the body shop 5 or 6 coats on each item before the little air dimples stopped showing up.

 

I only arrived at this decision after going to LOG 27 in Aspen, and seeing a Caterham with uncoated c/f fenders that had been driven up from Texas, through a couple of rain squalls. The fenders looked really bad -- chalky, dry, white splotches all over, and very hard to remove.

 

Clear-coating has another benefit on c/f --it gives the part tremendous depth, and makes the weave almost 3-dimensional in appearance.

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The Caterham carbon is notorious for white spotting. I have seen too many examples of it. I went the opposite direction to Tom after my early experiments revealed clear coating would add 100-150 pounds to the weight in all those extra coats.:p

 

So I went with the 3m paint protection film over all the carbon by getting a professional to do it. It has worked pretty well. It does not show up on the front wings unless you really look for it and they were a tricky shape with all the compound curves. It is easier to see on the rear wings if you catch it in the right sunlight or fluorescent light. No problems so far.

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