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One problem in a seven is being very low and not being seen by anyone. People (especially truck drivers and Mothers in 4WD’s for the school run) tend to reverse into you. One quick fix is to change over the standard Caterham horns for twin airhorns. These are also good for getting wildlife off the road in front of you - especially pigeons.
Twin horn airhorns are available from Halfords for about £15. You will also need some 1mm and 3mm wire, an inline fuse, electrical joiners/crimpers, and electrical tape.
There is a weight penalty for doing this as the air horn compressor is heavier than the existing horns, but I think it is worth it.
After much consideration I mounted the compressor on a plate bolted under the radiator reservoir.
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This little job needed to be done so the Road Angel could plug in somewhere. Sevens do not normally come with a lighter socket, so off to Halfords again. I wanted the socket to only provide power when the ignition was switched on.
The instructions with the lighter say to connect the centre to a +ve feed through a 15 or 20 amp fuse and connect the outside to an earth (-ve). After poking around under the dash and eventually finding that it is easiest to remove the two bolts holding the fuse box in place to get better access to the fuses (you need to pull out the top relay to get to the top bolt) I found that there is a good earth readily available at the left underside end of the dash. Finding a +ve feed is a little trickier.
The next step is to select one of the other power feeds in the fuse box that is 15 or 20 amp, decide which side is the positive fused side (ie after the fuse) strip part of this wire and connect to the centre of the new lighter, then connect the outside of the lighter to earth. Options for which fuse line to tap into were : brake/reversing light (15A), Radiator cooling fan (15A), Headlight Main (15A), Headlight Dip (15A), Wiper (15A), Horn (20A), Fuel Pump (15A), and ECU(20A)
I figured the radiator cooling fan is the least used circuit and connected to this. By doing this the cigarette lighter runs parallel with the cooling fan and is protected by the same 15A fuse. White is the positive unfused side and green is the positive fused side so I needed to strip a bit of the green wire and then connected to it.
Job done and works a treat.
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A Road Angel or similar device is a must with all the speed cameras being installed around the country. It comes with a plastic bracket to support the unit which needs to be fixed to the dashboard of the seven which gives a very small area to work with.
The bracket can be moulded when hot so I heated it and bent it to make it fit snugly against the back of the windscreen, and then fixed it in place using 3M DualLock which is an industrial strength version of velcro. This is sold in the UK by Light Aero Spares - www.lightaero.co.uk and is fantastic for all sorts of fixing needs.
I was originally thinking of mounting the bracket on the face of the dashboard but there would have been too much flex and it would have been further away from my line of sight while driving. Thanks to Myles for the suggestion of removing the edge trim on the front of the scuttle to allow the bracket to fit neatly.
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The standard rear lights on Caterhams have a large solid rubber block supporting them which weigh 0.6kg per pair. These can be replaced with lightweight aluminium ones from www.speedysteve.co.uk which weigh only 0.1kg per pair. They also look nicer than the original blocks when anodised black.
They can be a little tricky to instal as there is a rubber strip that goes between the aluminium and the wheel arch. The corners of this need to be notched to go round the corners of the mounting, and it tends to buckle as you tighten it up, but with some patience it fits perfectly and looks great.
I am starting to notice a bit of a pattern forming here - Myles has done each of the above modifications to his car!!
Check out how to do each of these modifications in more detail on Myle’s excellent site under ‘products’ - here
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