Approval and Registration

Since my last post much water passed under the bridge.

I put in the carpets. I used Velcro to attach most of the carpets. This way I can very easily take them out for cleaning. The carpets on the transmission tunnel and the bulkhead are glued.

Then the weather equipment was fitted. Everything went fine and Chrigel helped me with the tonneau cover.

As a last thing before bringing the car in for approval I had to move the inertia switch to the left hand side of the car and use rubber bushes to fit it.

Then my wife Irma strongly advised me to take a week off and we took a trip to Spain. Irma arranged everything so that on my birthday we were in Figueres where we visited the Salvador Dalí museum. Next day we went to see his house in Port Lligat and later in the week we visited Barcelona. A truly brilliant way to distract oneself from the daily routine. The kids were good and were apparently pleasantly surprised by Dalí's work and the architecture in Barcelona. Of course we also went to the beach while we were at it.

On the 29 October 2008 I borrowed Hans-Peter's, car rented a car trailer, loaded up the Caterham and brought the it in for approval at Kumschick Sports Cars in Schötz in the canton of Lucerne, Switzerland.

Apart from a few bolts which had to be tightened an apart from an engine management connector which was loose everything was good enough to allow the car on the road.

I still have a few minor things to do which I will do later this week:

• Fit a new windscreen stanchion -the one I have got dented- and a right hand side mirror. With this I won't need the rear view mirror and thus I'll have an even nicer view. Here in CH this is allowed, I don't know how the regulations in other countries.
  
• Move the rear silencer slightly to the back.
• Slightly reposition the steering column.
• Fixate the the positive lead from the battery so that it will remain away from the engine. Wear on the cable may result in unfortunate situations.
• Swap the Schroth "Profi II-FE asm" seat belts from left to right.

The loose connector on the engine management unit caused a single error with the fuel pressure. More fuel was added and the control unit for the fuel pump was replaced but still the problem remained. After some time the engine management was checked and the culprit was found. To be completely fair, the culprit was yours truly for not checking the connector in the first place.

At around 18:00 I loaded up the Caterham on the trailer and started driving home. We had a wonderful October with marvellous clear and sunny days where we could see the Pilatus mountains of the canton of Lucerne and the Alps of the canton of Glarus. That is until it was time to transport the car home. Snow started pouring down and the next day we had about 50 cm of it. As temperatures are still above freezing the snow isn't much fun for the kids to play as you get soaked when doing so.

The good this is no salt was used on the roads. When the weather improves I might get the Caterham out for a first trip. When doing so I will have to take into consideration that the tyres are particularly suited for summer weather and that lower temperatures have a negative effect. Also the brakes need to be run in and after around 200 km of periodical testing they will start working really well.

Yesterday I got my license plates. Now I am waiting for the right weather.