Jump to content

Caterham on EBay


slngsht

Recommended Posts

On this car the color combo doesn't help. The body panels inside the rear wing need to be painted black.

Also, perhaps the factory supplied rear wings are made in one radius only and can't be mounted any lower either. And since folks have over time have gone to 10 series tires these days, There's going to be some space. I imagine that to buy a super big 22" wheel to fill the space the width and off set wouldn't work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why does the rear wheel arch clearance look excessive on the Caterham?

 

Because, that is the way you want to set these up if you want them to handle right. I discovered this myself after finally getting adjustable spring hats for my car. You want the front a-arms to be parallel to the ground, and then depending on who you ask, you want a 10-15% rake on the chassis (higher in the back to lower in the front).

 

When Caterham's are set-up 'right' this is what they typically look like. Now, if you were building the car yourself, you could probably mount the rear wings a little lower to take some of the fender gap away, but then you also risk rubbing the tires when the springs are fully compressed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As long as we're scrutinizing Ill observe that this car has (what looks like) the caterham factory supplied high output zetec available at the time. I have the same engine / ITBs and ancillaries depicted here.

This one looks like it still has the stock focus injectors which caterham supplied with these. If that's true and it also has a pectel t2 ecu (also regularly supplied with this engine package) then these will need to be changed out for high impedance injectors or else the ecu will eventually fail.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The wheel arch clearance varies quite a bit, based on nominal wheel size, damper lengths, and rake, which is obviously adjustable. An unladen, 13-inch wheeled, touring car will look like it has too much fender gap in the rear.

 

-Bruce

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you please explain this: "...then these will need to be changed out for high impedance injectors or else the ecu will eventually fail" ?

 

What do the high impedance injectors look like? This engine looks pretty much like mine - I have 10000 track miles on it with a top end rebuild last year, but no changes to injectors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Pectel T2 manual is pretty clear that you must use high impedance injectors with it. Generally speaking, ‘high impedance’ means 12 ohms or higher, where the stock Ford Focus injectors that Caterham used on these engines are around 2.5 (mine measured 2.4 ohms). Because of this the injectors pull too much current when in operation which can cause the ECU to overheat. During extended running this can destroy the ECU, which is an expensive repair (I think ApexSpeed charges ~$800 for this).

 

You can’t really tell by looking other than the stock injectors are black - the easiest way to tell if you have a potential problem is to disconnect an injector and measure the resistance with a multimeter. Myself and several other people on the forum (one of whom I believe did in fact burn out an ECU) have all found this condition on these 210 HP Zetec configurations that Caterham supplied in the early 2000’s. These engines also were often set up by the factory to be extremely lean running as well (dangerously so in some cases) which IIRC is also due to the factory injectors having a low flow rate for the ITB setup they came with.

 

The fix is documented here somewhere - I will look for the thread in a bit. There is a Bosch 16 Ohm injector part that can be installed easily but you have to run a different (lower) fuel pressure and then take your car in to be tuned on a dyno to make sure it is running a safe AFR once they are installed. If you don’t have the serial cable and software needed to tune the T2 those things are available. Making a serial cable that plugs into the 1/4” jack on the dash is easy, and several of us have all the software you need to connect to the T2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...