Time spent: 4h
Cumulative time: 114h
Main activities:  Coming alive

Wow.  Big day today.  Started off by checking in with Caterham regarding some of the electricals. I had three leads which were loose in the engine compartment and nothing to tell me where they go.  One at the back of the engine turned out to be the sensor for the reversing light.  That just needed plugging in to the side of the gearbox.

The other two mystery leads (located at the front of the engine) were for the solenoid unit that hangs off one of the cross struts at the front of the engine.  Once I knew what they connected to, it was relatively easy to hook up. [note to Caterham – the Assembly Guide is woefully inadequate for things electrical ]

I then got on and installed the small cover plate that goes over the fuel filler pipes in the boot.  I just needed to drill a couple of holes and put some self-tapping screws in to fix this.  The cover plate only really fitted with the carpet removed so I fixed it directly to the floor of the boot rather than through the carpet.  That means I need to cut the carpet a bit to get it to fit around the cover plate.

I also pulled out my IVA checklist and noted a few things that need doing. One fairly major one was to hook up the earth lead from the fuel tank. Its awkward to get at (inside the drivers side rear wing), but didn’t take long. I just added an additional nut onto the protruding thread and that was done

At this point I realised that I had actually done pretty well everything apart from the final brake bleed, putting the wheels on and torquing the suspension.  So I decided to turn on the power and see what happened.  To my joy and relief, lots happened.  The lights worked, the indicators worked etc.  Its alive!

Wishing to finish on a high today, I jumped in my other boring car and whizzed down to the local petrol station and filled up a petrol can.  With that poured into the tank, I disconnected the Inertia Switch and cranked the engine.  After about 10 seconds or so I could see the oil pressure needle move to just onto the gauge which meant that the oil was circulating.  So I leapt out of the cockpit and re-connected the Inertia Switch, got back in and closed my eyes. 

After a reassuringly short amount of time, the engine coughed into life.  Mission Accomplished (well, sort of… still a lot of tidying up to do).