My 170S Build

Time spent: 6h
Cumulative time: 96h
Main activities:  Finish front wings, rear brakes, rear wings

With the message overnight from Caterham about how to fix the braided brake hose to the car, I got in and re-did this to make sure it was correct.  Slightly awkward to get at, but given its importance, I wanted to do it right.

After that, I started on fitting the A frame which took a while as the alignment was not perfect between the bushes and the chassis hole and that also its difficult to get the washers in place between the bush and the chassis around the bolt that goes through.  They kept falling off and fell into my overalls, into my sleeves – all over the place.  In the end I put another smaller bolt in from the other side and that held the washers in place whilst I tapped the bolt through from the outside of the car.  It was a tight fit.

Three washers each side seem to be right to centralise the A frame in the chassis (the idea being to use the washers as shims to make the axle sit centrally).

I then put the brake covers on the rear wheels and tried the handbrake.  It actually seems to be about right in terms of adjustment.  I was pleasantly surprised that I could just about manage to get the tunnel cover on with the handbrake at its must pulled up state.  That being the case, I got on and installed the plate that closes off the top of the transmission tunnel.

Next job was to install the rear wings.  I fixed installed a couple of the bolts to loosely locate the wings so that I could mark the notch I needed to cut out for the radius arm (there is already at hole there).  A junior hacksaw and my dremmel tool quickly created the notch I needed which I tidied up with a file to get rid of any sharp edges. 

Once I had done that and cut the triangle cutouts in the trim to allow it to bend around the shape of the wing, I fixed the wing in position.  Starting at the front, I fed in the trim and tightened the nuts as I worked my way around.  The only difficulty was one of the nuts in the boot being level with the boot surface.  I ended up removing the boot cover in order to get the bolt in and tightened.