Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Front Suspension going in

I wish I could show you some pictures to go with this post but the site seems to be crashing at the point where I upload them so I'll put them up another day.

After a few frustrating moments, several post-watershed utterances and less grazed knuckles than I thought, the front suspension is nearing completion. I've just got to attach the roll bar, and tighten the braided brake hoses to the calipers. Then the female brake unions need doing and that's it.

A few difficulties along the way: I think the upper wishbone is best to attach after you've fitted the spring/damper unit as it gives you a but more space to manoeuvre it in. Then the top bolt to attach the spring/damper unit is an absolute nightmare to remove and re-install. This was easily the most frustrating thing - the only way I found to accomplish the task was to screw it millimetre by millimetre. It took ages.

Apart from that, I learnt to make sure I read the instructions properly - particularly when fitting the 'upright' (screw the plain nut fully home before undoing it again) - and I'm just waiting for my steering rack before feeling like the front is done.

On that subject, the rack should be here on Friday. Caterham now have them but they're waiting for brake pads (which I hadn't realised were missing) to arrive tomorrow before sending them all out to me.

One last bit of chat for this post: I asked my wife to help so that she could be part of the process and I couldn't have built the front without her assistance. It was certainly a two person job on occasion.

1 comment:

Wes Fox said...

Well done Joel, really helpful comments for those who are following in your foot steps. I will be tackling this at the weekend, so please keep us informed of your progress.