The car is now three years old and still looking pretty neat. I have put a lot of miles on the clock (22k and counting) simply because it is so much fun. Living in the Cotswolds, I am surrounded by such beautiful scenery so there are always places to go to see. I am also acutely aware that, as my personal odometer tripped over to 70 this year, I need to make good use of the time I have left when I am flexible enough to get in and, more difficultly, out of the car.
Insurance
It seems that in the world of insurance, there is no such thing as loyalty. Actually, the reverse – the longer you stay with an insurer, the more they will try to make money out of you. I now always check what deals I can get when it comes around to renewing the policy. And as a result, this year, I moved to a different insurer and saved about £100 as a consequence.
OK – not a huge amount in absolute terms but as a percentage of my premium, quite significant. And the added bonus they gave me an extra 1000 miles to drive the car. In the end I used some of that money to include breakdown recovery option and still ended up spending less than I would had I stayed where I was.
MOT
I have to admit this was a bit of a concern to me. Looking back at the IVA, I was reminded that the car had initially failed on the emissions, and I wondered if this might have got worse over time? No easy way to check that aspect of the MOT so I just hoped all would be fine. But I could at least check as much as I could – particularly little things like windscreen washers and wipers.
Although I rarely drive in the wet, I could see that the current windscreen wipers were past their best. I decided to buy some replacement wiper blades from Tex which were getting good reviews on the Caterham Club forum. Whilst they were much more substantial that the standard Caterham blades, they left wet patches in the middle of the screen. I decided to go back to the Morgan blades I have used in the past, and they work well. I saw a suggestion of using some shrink tubing to add extra fixity to the connection to the wiper arm which is a very quick and easy addition.
The Club forum also gathers recommendations from fellow owners about MOT centres that understand Caterhams. I decided to take the car to one on that list that was about 30mins from home.
In the end, I suspect I was worrying about nothing. The car passed the test with no issues.
Dashcam
Included in that new insurance policy was a clause that would nullify any mandatory excess if I was able to provide dashcam footage of any incident. I thought it would be nice to have a camera and I was sure I wanted it to be inconspicuous. That meant something that would sit centre of the dashboard, ideal integrated with my phone holder.
Most cameras are intended to be installed pretty permanently but I wanted to be able to remove it, partly to be able to protect the camera from rain but also for basic security reasons. The actual space between the back of the windscreen and the dash is limited because of the slope of the windscreen and the need to have the camera high enough so that the lens will see over the wiper blades.
These constraints reduced the options significantly and I ended up getting a relatively wide flat camera from 70Mai that just fitted in that gap. It came with a smaller device intended to be fitted as a rear-view camera.
Having decided to make them easily removeable, I fitted some magnetic strips to the underside of two metal plates (one each for the front and rear cameras) and glued the one camera to the topsides of each plate. The magnetic fixing seems plenty strong enough for either camera and neither interferes significantly with the sightline from the driver’s seat.
At the moment, I am trialling the two cameras to see which works best. The small one intended for use as the rear camera does work surprisingly well and is hardly noticeable. The larger camera has the added advantage of having and back facing camera intended to capture the view in the cabin but which actually provides a pretty good view out of the rear.
Showercap
My other recent treat is a long-nosed showercap from soft bits for sevens (SBFS). I did try to make my own out of a car cover I bought for £10 from Screwfix. This was certainly not tailored to fit and behaved more like a spinnaker. I tried to improve it by adding poppers which could fit to those on the boot but, even with the fabric folded over, easily pulled out of the fabric. And it looked awful.
So I ordered the SBFS model on the basis that it would be useful for those times when the car is not at home in the garage. It did take a long time to come, but I have to say, it was worth the wait. It is really well made and is reversible (so you can have a reflective cover for those really sunny days). The various bits that hold it to the care are well thought out and I can see that it would be pretty secure in most weather conditions, with the added bonus that water is kept out of the engine bay.
My 170S Build 