Build 62. Bow Protectors

The bow protectors are not offered by Caterham as standard, which is baffling. They don't even offer the parts as part of the kit delivery so you have to source the parts yourself. I actually registered for stock availability at the Caterham Parts website and ordered them the moment they were in (they went out of stock again that day!)

Basically over time due to getting in and out of the car, and the throwing around of the harnesses getting in and out, this area of the car is prone to damage. some people used some helicopter tape, others PPF, but for me I wanted something that matched the final look of the car, so these carbon fibre protectors were the right fit.

It is a daunting task, drilling into the chassis and removing rivets without damaging anything in the process, but on the whole it was relatively easy and the end result is great.

I first covered the area in card, as the metal will go everywhere and be a pain to hoover up (esp. on the carpet) I started by using a 2.5mm drill on each rivet and drilled all the entire central section of the rivets out. I then moved up to a 4mm to get the final parts out, once done, the panel became loose and I could see which bits still had old rivets left in, these were then drilled out as necessary. I also unscrewed the two press stud bases from the chassis.

Next was to use the bottom two holes to spray lots of waxoyl into the chassis, this is mainly to glue together any of the old rivet metal that was now left in the chassis and to stop any future rattling.

Once I was happy that the prep was done, I offered up the protector to the chassis, be careful here as it will pull some paint off if you are not careful (which is fine as you are covering it up with this anyway, however near the ends you may not be so lucky, the lower end of mine pulled a bit of paint off and I had to put the protector slightly lower to cover it.)

First I attached the internal press stud which will "fix" the carbon fibre in place, and then in order to find the drill point for the external stud, I passed a 2.5mm drill bit from one of the the inside holes through and drilled the carbon fibre through. I could then fix the outer stud base in place (at this point I chose to swap for black bases which I ordered off ebay).

Once I was happy with the positioning, I drilled a 4mm hole in the carbon fibre where each new rivet will go, and then secure with a rivet. I chose to do this in sets of three, working from the bottom upwards!

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