HISTORY:

Purchased as a Caterham 7 HPC '235 Evolution' in kit form in May 1993 the above vehicle was registered on July 1 1993. The car was painted in 'Candy Apple' maroon, and was quite a stunning colour, but sadly it only remained this way until a rather large accident at Goodwood on 1st October 1994.

Up to that time, Caterhams had been fitted (with the excpetion of the JPE) with brakes derived at the front from a Triumph Herald/Spitfire, and Ford Sierra at the rear.  For a car with 370 bhp/tonne capable of 0-60 in 4 seconds and a top speed of 130nph plus, this was bound to cause problems. 

The accident was caused by vapour lock in one of the front brake calipers as the car slowed from around 125 mph at the end of Lavant Straight. Its estimated the car first contacted the tyre wall at this part of the circuit at well over 80mph before barrel rolling over 4 times before coming to a rest, the correct way up, at the end of Lavant Straight. 

Driver and car escaped to the extent that driver was unhurt other than a little shaken, and the car, despite the suspension being badly bent and broken was lifted off the top of the tyrewall, engine restarted, and driven back to the paddock! 

Damage to the chassis was extensive meant a trip to Arch Motors where the chassis was replaced from the a rear bulkhead backwards and a new short front chassis allowed the front suspension pickups to be modified to stronger, double shear, 1994 spec.

By this time I had decided the car should be  made into a pure street legal race car, so all unnecessary items were removed (the provision was made for a detachable scuttle so a JPE aeorscreen assy. could be fitted to the car - adding 10mph to the top speed)

Other parts such as the spare wheel carrier were also removed, the chassis completely repanelled and painted in Glasurite Day-Glo Orange by the TSK Auto’s in Dartford.(Caterhams contracted paint shop).  

The car also acquired a number of carbon fibre body panels, which unlike the wet lay carbon Caterham sold at very high prices, tehse panels were manufactured by the same people at Activa Technology, who had made many of the panels for the McLaren F1 road car.    This was the start of an obsession with carbon fibre which was to last some years and far beyond being a mere customer of Activa.

At this time the original "Evolution 235" spec Vauxhall Engine was converted to fuel injection and the engine dry sumped. Although this engine only lasted a few weeks before the oil system failed due to poor assembly by SBDevelopments, it did produce about 240bhp from the otherwise Caterham 235 spec engine. Power delivery was much smoother and richer in the midrange with much more torque and no flatspots or stalling on snap throttle opening.

The Dayglo® livery - doesn't reflect the brightness of the colour on photographic film, car at (clockwise from top left) Le Mans in 1997, On the roads of Surrey in 1995, Silverstone in 1997when McLaren were doing a test the following day - What a great photo op!;  and the paddock as it once was at Goodwood (1997).

But for a few minor engine changes which lifted the power 255bhp the care saw lots of use in sprints, trackdays and the odd drag race (it won the Ultimate Fast Car award for the 'Kit Cars and Specials' class at Santa Pod in 1995, beating everything else in class by a massive margin!).  The car also featured in CCC magazine in 1996 again at Santa Pod (driven by Mark Hales) in an effort to find the UK's fastest road legal competition car. Needless to say, it won!

The car remained in this guise until 1998 when after several further enhancements to the engine the chassis started to literally fall apart. All of the rivets running down the underside of the transmission tunnel were loose, and the chassis creaked when driven over uneven surfaces.

So it was back to Arch Motors and another major rebuild and some serious chassis strengthening....

The chassis was rewprked in thicker gauge tubes, some triangulation added around the diff, and again repanelled this time in aluminium on the outside. 

This is the great thing about Caterhams, £4k spent on a chassis strip, recoat and repanel and (assuminmg the rest of it cleans up nicely) you have a new car!

The majority of the stressed internal bulkheads, panels and floor were now made from carbon fibre  (a totally unique concept at the time), and again the car was repainted by TSK, but this time in Day-Glo yellow as the JPE had been some years before. 

K2RUM following its 1998 rebuild - Now in Dayglo® Yellow.,  New cams and steel internals in the engine saw power rise to 270bhp, and an uprated version of Caterhams own six speed H pattern gearbox  was fitted.
Bespoke seats weighting just 1.1kgs each and new instrumentation  providing limit based alerts of oil pressure, oil temp etc. essential for proactive detection of problems such as oil pump belt failure on track.

With more and more of the car including mirrors/wings/dash/seats/nosecone and all the internal paneling of the chassis made from carbon bibre as well as numerous other minor components the dry weight of the car dropped to  approx. 510kgs .

Le Mans in 1999 saw the opportunity to repay Mike Brewer for all the unkind works he had said about Caterhams on Channel 4's 'Driven' aka 'Drivel' where Brewer demonstrated his driving ability to be little more than capable of organising a used car lot (funny that!) Threatened by 200 odd angry Caterham owners he was forced to go for a ride.  In the second photo he has actually just vomited onto his lap!

Mike Brewer during and  following a short ride at Le Mans in 1999.  The presence of the CRS (as well a a particularly gay looking Charles King-Holford) meant we only got to go quickly for around 1/2 mile each way between Arnage and the Porsche Curves.  Sadly, in order to turn around I had to adopt a similar method to this although the crowd was rather smaller.   The Channel 4 producer can be seen advising Mike on how best to carry on his broadcast tour of the Le Mans campsites with a previously digested kebab down the front of his shirt.

Over the winter of 2003/4 serious revisions were made to the gearbox and clutch as well as the differential, as well as a precautionary engine rebuild which resulted in no components being replaced for wear and tear other than two tappet shims!! Not bad for a 14,000 mile engine of 145bhp/litre!!

Topped off with a new injections system with 8 injectors (to maximise fuel atomisation at higher engine speeds) and a new 'ram air' airbox to eliminate the disturbance made to the induction system by airflow around the front wheel 

8 injectors  and a new 'ram air' airbox to eliminate the disturbance made to the induction system by airflow around the front wheel  vastly improving acceleration above 120mph

From 2005 to 2007 the car was rebuilt again, a move necessitated by chassis related issues caused by shock loads introduced by the sequential gearbox and the ever increasing torque reaction as the engines power and torque were enhanced.  The engine received another rebuild with further modifications taking the power over 300bhp.

Chassis was stripped to the bare spaceframe , allowing damaged areas to be grit blasted to allow thorough examination for cracks or any other weaknesses.
Caterham spaceframe , already modified 1998 around the upper diff mounts.  The damage caused by the lack of good engineering design in Caterham's chassis can be seen in the picture to the right, where shock loads form the transmission and torsional loads from the engine hasve casued numberous nickel broze welded joints to fail.   Caterham make a big sell out of the nickel bronze welding, but we resorted to MIG and TIG to repair the chassis.
29 new tubes were added to the spaceframe , including a proper cage for the differential whihc uises all 6 mointing points.  Caterham to this day only use 4 of them.  The image )above left) shows how the triangulation allows the twisting forces from the diff to be distributed over a much wider area, vastly imcreasing the chassis strength.
Shots showing reassembly of the chassis and major components (including a custom made propshaft) being fitted back.  Below, the car really starts to take shape as the reassembly continues.

2006 - present - the car now in the unique, and much admired  'Zip' paint scheme