Duratec Caterham SV build

The Duratec SV Build story

The kit arrived on the 11th of December, however I was on holidays in Australia and NZ.  Arrived back in Dubai and went straight out to get my kit released from Jebel Ali docks.  One slight problem as they had managed to give my Duratec engine to another customer a week previously, instead I was offered a set of rotating street sweeper brushes !!!!.  Finally got my car including the recovered engine back to my garage on the 23rd.  Started building kit on Boxing day.

SV and Duratec build highlights

No real problems putting together the front and rear suspension, followed Caterham build manual on most stuff.  Best tool I bought was a Metric and Imperial Tap and Die set from Machine mart, it has been truly invaluable during build.  I felt a bit thick when I thought that Caterham had sent me the wrong steering rack as it fouled with one of the chassis tubes, found it was just a matter of rotating the rack in its mounts.  Took me about 20 minutes to solve that one!!

Fitting FIA roll bar required a bit of brute force and widening of mounting holes but otherwise no real problems.

Engine installation was fun as we could not get the gearbox and engine to seat together with the gearbox in the chassis.  Plenty of room in the SV chassis, however, ended up removing gearbox and fitted to engine off the car.  After that installation as a combined unit was relatively straight forward.  Had a problem with the throttle linkage fouling the diagonal chassis rail, solved this by constructing a couple of 17mm spacers and moving mechanism back towards the block.  Other big problem is the alternator mount fouls on the LHD steering rack, so just waiting for a new alternator mount to arrive from England to finish car.

Wiring in the Duratec loom took a little thought, decided to move fuse box on cockpit firewall a couple of inches towards the middle and then fit the Weber ECU beside it.  Looks like a good position, especially taking into account the quite long Weber loom.  This loom came with a very long feed from the ECU back to the fuel pump.  I decided to cut it and splice it into the wire that runs from the unused Caterham inertia reset switch, which runs directly back to the fuel pump.  Only joined up the live feed from the ECU, didn't bother about the earth.  Seems to work OK.

Raceline supplied me with the Caterham grey plug and a wiring loom to wire up all the sensors from the engine to the Stack dash.  Pretty well got it spot on, only had to add a wire for the oil pressure and Alternator live feed.  Trimmed the rest of the Caterham loom of redundant wires and heat shrunk tubed the ends.

Fitted interior without any major drama's, seat mounts took some time to get right.  Had to bend throttle pedal towards driver to get full throttle range.  Bled the brakes on my own with a easy-bleed kit, and it was easy, just don't try it on the clutch, as the top seal leaked badly and was not pretty.  Bought a long "Touring Car" gear knob from Halfords, however Allen screws did not give sufficient purchase on gear stick, so filled up gear knob with epoxy metal, then tapped it with a M10 thread, fits great now .

Body work went on with little drama, used plastic bolts as supplied by Karsten for the rear wings and silicone to "glue on" the front cycle wings.  Fitted a nice set of Carbon-Kevlar stone guards as supplied by Richard in France's at an amazingly reasonable price !  Look absolutely stunning, much better than the stainless Caterham ones.

Getting towards the end of the build, fitted the Raceline water-rail, baffled sump and exhaust.  All of which were fantastic quality.  Had to modify the block to fit the water-rail, by trimming off some of the unnecessary protrusions, so the rail could sit snugly against the head.  Angle grinder and Dremmel did the duty, took only 20 minutes.  However on torquing up the cam box bolts, found that I had to shorten three of them, as the bolts were "digging in" to the water-rail.  Managed to break one of these while torquing up, so had to take off Cam cover, Dremmel a slot into snapped bolt and use screwdriver to remove offending snapped bolt.  Big sigh of relief when it came out OK.

After getting an exhaust manifold gasket from the local Ford dealer, exhaust went on with ease.  Rear silencer mount is best run through the lap seatbelt mount for strength.  Needed my trusty tap and die kit to cut a suitable long threaded bolt to go all the way through the seatbelt, chassis and skin.

I tried to configure the Stack dash to customise the settings, little joke there from Caterham, they had wired up the dash buttons that control the Stack incorrectly, had to take off the heater blanking plate and re-wire all correctly.  I had a few headaches with the Rev counter as it would not take the feed from the ECU, ended up taking the feed from one of the coil trigger wires with a 47K ohm resistor in line.  However had to tell the Stack rev counter that it was only a two cylinder engine as the wire I spliced into was for only 2 of the four plugs.  The Speedo wheel circumference was a bit of a hassle until I discovered (thanks to Blatchat techtalk) that I had to enter half the circumference as the sensor was measuring the Cap head (Allen) bolts as 8 instead of four.  Once the half circumference figure was put in, everything was OK.

Went out for a drive round the block a few times to bed in the brakes, seems to drive beautifully, very smooth power delivery, with an excellent gearbox action.  After the drive just a bit of tweaking on pedal position and air-filter housing.

On the road at last, got the car registered with the help of Khalid Bin Hader of Performance Group in Dubai.  Not an easy job, but all done.  Running the car initially without an aeroscreen has been interesting, first time out there was a strong wind with heaps of sand drifting across the road and into my eyes.  No option, must wear a helmet.  Engine very strong, sounds great with heaps of power.  Got a GRP aeroscreen sent up from South Africa, very nice at £100, however the courier company managed to break off one of the wings off, so trimmed it with my angle grinder and a file and put the shorter version on the car, still looks great and very happy with the improvement in wind protection afforded by it.  This has since been replaced with a Carbon one from Richard in France

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