Assembly

Session 15: 22nd November 2020

This was a session of two halves. The first half was progress, and the second sheer frustration.

First, there was the fun bit. I'd now got the final piece of guidance that I needed in order to finish the heater off. I needed two lengths of pipe, one slightly longer than the other, both cut from the same section of a longer piece. That was the work of five minutes, and then the temperature controller for the heater could be plumbed in (well, one end of it, but that's enough to stop it hanging in mid air).

Approximately, hot water comes in from the left (presumably the lower pipe?) and is either sent down and into the heater, or up and bypassing the heater entirely. Cooler water comes out of the upper pipe (?) and back to the radiator.

And then the airbox sits in front of it. There's more space here than I'd expected, so I imagine that this is another case of there being one unit for both S3 and SV. It takes air from the side inlet, expands over a large filter that separates the bottom half from the top. It then passes down the large pipe into the engine.

Next came the airbox. This was one of the classic discrepancies in the assembly manual. According to the manual it came pre-fitted to the chassis. According to Caterham, "Nah, we've never done that..." But, no matter, it was all fairly obvious what went where and how. It's possible that I've fitted the seal between the airbox and the bonnet backwards, but that'll be a cheap part to replace if I have.

I'd detached the bellhousing from the engine in the previous session. Hauling the gearbox out of its box and attaching these two together was (once a sticky label had been removed from the mating surface) four bolts and ten minutes, including getting the torques right.

I'd not finished undressing the engine last time, so that process needed to be completed, with the belt having to come off, in order to then remove the alternator. The plenum (engine air intake) had to come off too. This is going to be quite a tight fit, isn't it?

Next was the task of attaching the gearbox to the engine. This would be a simple task if done freehand, but neither item is a single-person lift. Since the engine was already on the hoist, I positioned the gearbox as best I could using some axle stands and the cardboard insert from the box it came in, and manoeuvred the engine into position. The shaft from the gearbox passes though the clutch and mates into a female connector that's buried in the engine. I can believe that this is a close fit, but I doubt it's a force-fit and, try as I might, I couldn't get the gearbox to fully mate with the engine. It'd only go so far, and then the bolts would get to a point that I wasn't happy putting any more tension on. All this wasn't helped by the setup being somewhat precarious. Over the course of a couple of hours, things moved from, "It's okay, I only have to do this once..." to, "I'm going to have to rethink my approach if this is ever going to happen..."

But what to do differently? The conclusion I drew was that, even with the hoist and the load-balancer, the engine wasn't as manoeuvrable as I'd like. Given the choice, I'd rather have the engine static and be jiggling the gearbox, not the other way round. But, to have the height control that I wanted, I'd still need the hoist. So, I used the remainder of the session to shuffle the hoist round so allow it to place the engine on some pallets in the corner of the garage (which only required a 20-point turn of the hoist, easy...) and ordering some straps from Amazon to wrap round the gearbox and enable it to be attached to the hoist.

Better luck next time?

Close. Closer. Closer still. But still, no luck...

Session 16: 27th December 2020

Fortunately, Plan B worked. With the engine resting on a couple of pallets (not the floor for reasons I'll get to...), that freed the hoist to support the gearbox on the newly-purchased lifting straps. With some careful manoeuvring, the bolts connected and gently pulled the gearbox bell housing into place. Phew.

Next, was lifting the lot (now quite unwieldy, what with the weight and the combined length of the assembly) waaaaay up into the air to provide access for the next job. There were a couple of extra boltholes in the bell housing. All the bits for this stage in the build were to be found, unlabelled, in a box labelled "starter motor". Amongst them was a large piece of PTFE with some bolts in it. Hmm.

Slowly nudging the gearbox into position.

Given the added context of the parts it was supplied with, this was clearly a skid plate. Had it not been supplied with a bunch of other engine-stuff then I do wonder if I'd have missed it, or at least, had to phone a friend to solve the riddle of the gap in the engine.

The gap is because the engine comes with a "dry sump", which is more close-fitting than the regular wet sump because, well, it doesn't need to hold as much oil (though, bizarrely, the engine needs more oil overall in this configuration). As a result, the flywheel juts below the body of the engine and so needs the skid plate for protection.

Perfectly safe. Definitely safe. Probably.

That probably shouldn't be exposed to the weather.

No sealant, nothing. A couple of bolts at the front, and a couple more at the rear.

In one corner we have the chassis. In the opposite corner we have the engine and gearbox. Here's hoping that it won't be a fight to introduce the one into the other.

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