My 170S Build

January 2022 – a new year. Christmas and all the other festivities are done. Time to make the first moves to build this fun machine.  Sounds impressive, but all I have actually done is to send enough money to the UK to reserve a 170 for myself to build (£3,000).  With a bit of luck, and covid willing, it will be delivered in November which should suit perfectly my move back to Cambridge from here in Australia. 

The relocation back to Cambridge is ‘Life 5.0’ – otherwise known as retirement.  The Caterham is my first Retirement Project.  Having read various blogs from people doing these builds, I realise that I am going to be the lucky one.  This is something that I can take as long as I want to complete.  If I want to do it all day, every day, I can.  No more pesky meetings or urgent deadlines to get in the way.

I have been in touch with the guys at Krazy Horse in Bury St Edmunds (about 30 mins from Cambridge) who are going to call me back about the specification – although that level of detail is not required as yet, might as well firm up on a few things.

I was looking at the tools I will need and actually, I think I have a vast majority of them back home (home being the garage at our house in Cambridge).  Unfortunately, being so far away, I am working from memory as to what we actually have there.  Still, it’s the sort of thing that I can quite easily top up as need be if I find myself short of a few things.  I was expecting to be able to find at least some of the more specialist things second-hand, from people who have completed their projects (axle stands anyone?).

One slight worry I have is the size of my feet.  That seems to come up quite a bit in things I have read.  That is going to be something to look at when I am building to see if there is something I can do to make it easier to drive in Size 11s.

The other worry I have is that I don’t have a double garage (half of the garage has been converted to a granny annex for elderly parents).  Looking at the build blogs, some people have managed to do this in a single garage – its a pretty small car after all.  Definitely not a show-stopper I think.