Caterham Super Seven 1600

This morning I joined the Essex area meet up of the Caterham & Lotus Seven Club. Over 20 cars gathered at the Great Baddow Barn for a blat around the country roads of Essex, ending up at the Swan Inn outside of Colchester (next to the impressive Chappel Viaduct). Excellent weather and a great bunch of people. Mine was the slowest car there of course, but it is just a road car. I can't compete with a CSR260 or 420R ! Shame I had to leave at midday to head off to work, I'll try and stay longer next time.

Today I did an initial test of recording the sound (and video) of the car. My focus is on trying to capture reasonably high quality audio, which is quite tricky in a loud open-top car! To record sound I'm using a Zoom H1n audio recorder. This has a stereo microphone setup in an X-Y configuration, which should give some kind of stereo image. Obviously there is a lot of wind noise to deal with, so a wind shield is essential. The device has a limiter, but setting the gain is not straightforward as the loudness levels vary hugely on the road. I set quite a low gain to stay away from the limiter as much as possible.  The recorder was mounted on the passenger side panel, just below the widescreen armrest. For video I just used my iPhone mounted on the passenger headrest column using a bike phone holder. I did some post-processing on the audio, mostly compression and some EQ. As a first go I think it's ok. Will try and improve things next time.

Having previously got the Just Add Lightness front headlights, today I received the front indicators. These are direct replacements for the standard front indicator bulbs, sitting in the same holders. I also ordered clear lenses to replace the current orange ones. Fitting is simply a matter of unscrewing the lens and replacing the old bulb with the new unit. The only other issue is the relay may need replacing due to the low power that the LEDs use. I ordered this as well, and replaced the old relay with the new one on the main fuse board. Identifying the indicator relay is easy as you can hear and feel it working when the indicators are on. Results look great and they are much brighter than the standard units. The only incandescent bulbs remaining are the side indicator repeaters on the front wings. I'm probably going to leave these for now as replacing them means digging out the wiring that is buried in the glue that holds the wing to the stay.

So after my 900 mile trip to Edinburgh and back my K&N air filters are looking a little dry. Halfords do the necessary refresh kit for £12. It comes with a cleaning fluid and an oil spray.  First thing is to remove the air filters by undoing the securing nuts that hold the outer plates in place (8mm spanner). Ooh, naked Jenveys look great ! Having picked off the assorted collection of flies and wasp carcasses I used the oil spray to coat all the way around the filters and let them dry for 20 minutes before refitting. Now they have the proper salmon-red colour. There's lots of oil spray left to do this again. May use the cleaner fluid next time.

This was a big one, a 900 mile trip from London to Edinburgh and back. I've been waiting to do this ever since I ordered the car, and this week there was a perfect window of good weather to do it.  Why Edinburgh? Well the reason I sold my previous 7 was to fund a Masters course at Edinburgh University. I then stayed on to do a PhD and postdoctoral work, so I ended up living there for nearly 10 years. I still do work with a colleague at the University so it's partly a business trip, but mostly I just want to do the drive in the car. My plan was to drive up in one day, and then split the return trip with a stop overnight in Manchester to catch up with a friend in Bromley Cross. Having scanned the weather forecasts there seemed to be a nice 4-day block of settled weather from 30th August for the rest of the week, so on Sunday I made the decision to go for it and booked my hotel in Edinburgh. I spent most of the bank holiday Monday preparing for the trip. This was my first major ou...