Front Light Clusters

Session 7: 4th October 2020

The manual claims that this is the worst job on the car. I'm not sure how much that is true, versus say, that mechanics hate electrics. However, it's fiddly.

There are three elements to the front lights. The indicator repeater sits on the bicycle wing, which won't be fitted for months yet. The headlamp and the indicator "pod" sit on a stalk that projects from the forward upper wishbone mount (retained by the same bolt as the wishbone, glad I hadn't torqued that already).

The headlamp itself, and the stalk that supports it. The stalk is in the correct orientation here and the headlamp, when fitted, will sit on top.

For me, there's a slightly odd mix of messages here. The headlamp itself is a lovely-looking unit, bulbous, sealed and solid, with four cables coming from underneath. Those cables then route into the stalk and use the stalk as conduit into the chassis. All very neat. I could be wrong, but the indicator lamp looks like it came straight off a Mini. Not the BMW version, the original. It's simple, round and domed. Let's call that a classic design. That adds another two wires to route through the stalk. That sits on the front of the "pod". Now, to me, a pod is an ovoid shape, smooth and continuous, like an egg. By that definition, the Caterham indicator pod is missing it's lower half, exposing the cabling as it routes from the headlamp and indicator lamp into the stalk. Worse, at first I took them to be mirrored mouldings. However, closer examination suggests that they both came from the same mould, but were then roughly and manually machined to create a left-right pair. So, we have the beautiful headlamp sat on top of a manually-cut half-shell of black plastic. Hmm.

Check out the finish on this "curved" surface. Clearly hand-done, and leaving four different corners instead of a continuous curve. Not great.

After and before adding the foam rubber. The white backing plate and rubber seal for the domed indicator are central. The slotted hole in the top of the unit is ultimately sandwiched between the stalk and the headlamp unit. There's zero guidance on where the rubber is supposed to be, other than that it's supposed to be "securely and continuously" applied to the edge. Hopefully this is right?

Today's session was all prep. I ended the session with nothing new bolted to the chassis. There's a couple of reasons for that. Once the cables are in the stalk, that's permanent. There's also a couple of grommets that are there for weatherproofing and vibration-proofing that, if absent, are likely to cause the car to fail it's government inspection (IVA) at the end of the build. There's also some assembly required on the "pods". Because of the absence of the lower half, there's an exposed edge. I'm guessing that this is a little too thin and a little too prominent on the front of the car, and so is an injury-risk for anyone who is unfortunate enough to be run over. Rather than supply a pod-lower-half plastic moulding, Caterham supply some foam rubber strip and the instructions task you with superglueing one to the other.

The underside of the stalk. The headlamp bolts through the ring on the left and the cables emerge from a hole in the centre of the bolt. They then pass into the hole in the stalk and down the interior, emerging on the right.

The plate on the end of the stalk mates with this plate on the chassis, with the cables going through that hole too. I believe (the instructions aren't completely clear) that there's rubber grommets at each end of this sequence, just to add to the fun.

There were a couple of other minor issues that I needed to ask Caterham about before proceeding further. One was about the horn mounting (as I was reading ahead looking for other quick jobs) and the other was about where the indicator pod earths to (no mention of this connection in the manual).

The other five wires have a thin male connector at the end, as does the live end of the repeater. I strongly suspect goes into one half of a connector that's presently unlabelled and in a baggie that's cable-tied to one of the chassis tubes. However, it's immediately by a 6-pin connector into the pre-fitted cable loom and the wires are all the same colours as those of the headlights. I can put 2 and 2 together.

This is the lighting connector for the wiring loom, right?

And this unlabelled bag of parts contains the mating section of that connector? Seriously, there's not a word in the manual about any of this stuff.

The repeater earths to the wingstay in the holes I drilled last time. However, there's no guidance as to where the indicator pod earth goes, beyond that there's enough flex for it to make it to the chassis and there's an eyelet at the end of that flex. However, I'm not seeing a spare hole in the chassis for that earthing connection, and with an eyelet not a male connector, it's definitely not being connected into the loom.

So, that was kind-of it. Finding some bits, working out how they all went together, attacahing the indicator lamps and superglueing some rubber. I located the parts for the next step in the process (fitting of the front anti-roll bar) but I can't do that until the lights are on because, as is now starting to feel traditional, the head of the bolt that holds the lights in place sits just behind and one needs to be fitted before the other can go on. So I did the now-standard Amazon order for random consumables (more tape, spray lubricant, heat shrink tubing) and headed home.

Where's this go?

Session 8: 11th October 2020

The prep done, today was about assembling the lights and getting them fitted to the chassis. That requires the indicator pod, then the stalk, then a washer and a nut, being threaded onto the cabling that emerges from the base of the headlight lamp, then a grommet being added to the two sets of cables, and then both sets of cables being threaded through the stalk. Four attempts and two hours later, I hadn't got the first one done. The blocker was that the weatherproofing tube that surrounds the cables emerging from the headlight isn't flush to the cables. This introduced two problems:

There's more material in the narrow stalk than there needs to be
It bunches up where it inserts into the stalk (which is on the side and so forces the tubing round a corner) rather than sliding smoothly down the stalk

No sequence, and no amount of lubricant, made a difference. So, there's nothing for it, the tube needs to go. It won't be acceptable to the IVA inspectors to just have the cables bare, that's been made clear, and besides, this is front-and-centre on the car. So I stripped the headlight and confirmed that I can replace the tube with heatshrink tubing. If the fit is closer, and with no slack, things will (hopefully) go more smoothly. However, that means stripping more things back, then doing additional work, before I can move forward. And ordering more consumables.

The item in question.

Since I was waiting for parts, I flipped the page to see what, if anything, I could do next. The front anti-roll bar can't be fitted yet as it sits directly in front of a retaining bolt for the front suspension (seriously, who designed this thing? *). However, there were a few steps that could be done to get it ready. The first was to insert the rubber bushings into their holders. I expected this to be a fight, but it wasn't - 2 minutes, done. Next they needed sliding onto the bar itself. This was listed as requiring some use of force, but it didn't - 2 minutes, done. Then a pair of dust shields needed to be added - seconds, done. And then the balls themselves needed threadlocking onto the ends of the rod - 2 minutes, done.

* Yes, I know. I also do know the reason it's like this. Every anti-roll bar I've used previously had push rods between the suspension and the bar. Do this and you can put the bar wherever you want (up, down, forward, back), but then it's three components and four ball joints. This design has one component and two ball joints (lighter, simpler, more robust), but the compromise is that it needs to sit on the pivot-line of one or other of the suspension arms, in this case the upper...

Front anti-roll bar brackets and bushings.

The front anti-roll bar sub-assembly, ready to be fitted onto the chassis.

Hmm, okay, flip another page. Front brake lines are next. A brief search located these within the mountain of boxes. These bridge between the pressurised brake lines in the car (copper tube, pre-fitted along with the wiring loom) and the brake disc callipers. There was a small amount of confusion as there's more parts in the bag than are needed on the car (don't know, not asking, but it's right), but the sequencing resolved, the parts could be added to the chassis. This is a rare example of something bolted to a body panel, not the tubular chassis. The panels, being aluminium, aren't at all structural, so this is as much using the brake line to support the panel as the other way round.

Interior view of the front brake line.

Exterior view of the line, curling from the body panel to the calliper.

The page after that covers the radiator, which sits in front of the front anti-roll bar, so is best left until that's fitted, which is after the lights.

So I read on a little further. The engine is coming up fast now (assuming I ever finish the lights...), and one of the early jobs on that is to fit the gearbox, which doubles the size of what's already the biggest subassembly. The gearbox is the bottom-most box at the back in the big stack of boxes. Hmm. And then, once assembled, needs to be swung in the air and threaded into the front of the chassis. Hmm. If I do that work behind the chassis (where the gearbox and the spare space is) then I need to get the engine and gearbox from the back to the front, past the chassis, before I fit it (which sounds terrifying). So, one of the jobs that's coming up will involve taking ALL of the boxes from the back to the front, and moving the chassis all the way to the back in order to create a space at the front in which to do the engine and gearbox assembly. That sounds like a couple of hours, right there. Ah well, at least there's light at that end of the garage...

Basically no visible progress.

Session 9: 18th October 2020

I started early for this session, determined that this session finished with the lights installed. And it's as well I did start early - it took all day.

To replace the troublesome tubing I had to dismantle the headlamp. The LED headlamp is actually a sealed unit that's held to the lens with springs. The rear dome would once have held a reflector but in this design is purely aesthetic. There's then far more connectors and wiring than is strictly necessary, before a weatherproofing rubber seal and passing through the threaded tube to the outside.

As illustrated opposite, when I opened the unit the rubber seal wasn't in place. Some investigations confirmed that the internal diameter of the threaded tube is 10mm and the external diameter of the weatherproofing is 15mm. No big surprise that it's not fitting then! It took some fairly hefty modifications to get it into place, but fortunately they were quick ones to do.

It was then just (!) a matter of adding three sections of heatshrink tubing (one from the headlamp, one from the indicator, and then one joining the two sections into a single section for the passage down the stalk.

The weatherproofing not fitting, the reason why it wasn't fitting, and the amount of modding that was required in order to get it into place.

The redone weatherproofing, all neat, tidy and installed. Or so I thought when I took the picture.

A bunch of faff later, I had two subassemblies ready to go onto the chassis. Except that they wouldn't go on. There's a catch on the car-end of the stalk that means that you have to fit the stalk to the car first, as only then can the wiring make it all the way into the car via a hole in the chassis. With the wiring in place, you can't connect the catch.

So, at that point there was nothing for it but to remove the wiring from the stalk again. That damaged the heatshrink, so that needed redoing. And then fit the stalk to the chassis. And then refit the wiring into the stalk, this time lying on my back facing upwards to see the hole in the stalk. Oh, and then fit a grommet to the car-end of the wiring, where it emerged from the hole in the chassis. Twice, once on each side. Gah.

That hole. Could they not have made it any bigger? If it had been a slot then the job would have been a whole lot easier.

The car now has eyes.

The design of the lights has a very prominent horizontal line, which I believe is the side lights. These don't seem to be quite horizontal right now. That's fixable as they are held in by springs. It'll be fiddly as heck to get right, so a job for later (possibly when the car is on the ground), but an important one as if they are at an angle it'll scream if they are turned on.

But for now, at last I can move on to the next job.

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