Day 2 - Uprated Master Cylinder, Calipers & Discs and Left Hand Upright (Half Day)

I had planned to get all of the front end suspension completed today, but looking through the parts I realised that there were a couple of bits missing, preventing me from completing the job.

Initially Katey and I started out in the garage looking at the left hand upright. Reading through the manual it became clear that the caliper would need to be in position prior to mounting the wing stay.

Job 4 - Fitting Uprated Discs to uprights

I had ordered the car with the standard brakes, but ordered the uprated brakes and master cylinder after the initial order (due to there being no cost difference).

This resulted in the car having 2 sets of front brakes and the standard discs mounted to the uprights. These had to be removed by removing the hub and disc from the upright and and replacing with the uprated, larger vented discs.

 Standard disc on the left and uprated on the right

Job 5 - Swapping Standard Master Cylinder for Uprated Master Cylinder

On completing this job my brother (Alex) and his wife (Charlie) came round to see the car for the first time since it had returned from painting and also to assist with the build. Alex swapped with Katey and we started by changing the standard master cylinder with the uprated one. Which in theory was an easy job, but in practice proved a pain in the arse mainly due to a used split pin that had to be replaced on the bolt attaching the master cylinder to the brake pedal. I have to torque the brass bolts attaching the brass hosing to the master cylinder, but don't have anything to do so! Another internet search me thinks! It is also fair to say that some tweaking will be required on the brake pedal & switch.

Standard master cylinder with the uprated on above before swapping them over

I had read in Tom's Blog that there should be some damper extensions supplied with the kit and I had contacted Caterham about this so thought I had them, but it appears that I was sent the steering rack extenders (which I don't need as I have a wide track steering rack already). Looking through the parts picking list and the manual there is no reference to the damper extensions, so I will have to contact Caterham tomorrow about them.

Job 6 - Fitting Uprights

We then moved on to the left hand upright following several more read throughs of the manual contemplating as to whether we should carry on and decided we would, the dampers could be removed and the extension fitted later if required! Hope that was the right decision.

The uprated disc fitted to the upright and mounted on on the car

Job 7 - Fitting uprated Caterham/AP 4 pot Calipers

I the manual there is a note detailing that with uprated calipers the brake pads should be fitted before the wing stays, but doesn't directly mention that the brake calipers should be fitted at this stage. We decided to fit the caliper which meant fitting the brake hoses and pads in the caliper which took a little figuring out with no instructions! But successfully done we mounted the wing stay on and tightened everything up to the required torque values (brass bolts excluded).

Mounting the AP / Caterham 4-pot caliper to the upright

Torquing all the bolts up

As we had made good progress we thought we would move on to the right hand side, until we found that we had 2 left hand uprights (even though the box was marked right), so this somewhat halted progress for the day.

I will call Caterham tomorrow to request the right hand upright, find out how they torque the brass bolts and discuss the wide track damper extensions.