Build 9. Front Anti Roll Bar

After a lovely week of sunshine, I downed tools and worked on the garden instead, so slow progress this week. The ARB was "pretty" straight forward but certainly required a bit of force and patience. First off I gathered all the bits that were needed to build the ARB (note: match the bush colour to that of the sticker on the ARB itself, in my case it was red).

I don't have too many photos of this step as my hands were pretty messy with grease! Build the ARB as per the manual.

• Insert the bushes into the brackets, use silicon lube to help
• Apply silicone lube to the bar, and then slide the brackets both on (I slid mine to the middle so they don't touch the chassis when fitting the bar)
• Next, slide on the dust covers (the correct way around!)
• Finally apply loctite to the thread and screw on the balls. I'm not actually sure how much effect this has as I'm sure my balls became loose once I inserted the bar into place, hopefully this will have no problems later, but I'll ask Caterham to check in the PBC and also it is easy to rectify at a later date as all is accessible.

Now you have a prepared bar, you can attempt to fit it in place on one side of the upper wish bones. As per other blogs, I ended up using a dremel to remove the powder coating on the inside of the ARB socket, and as a result some paint also came off on the top/entry point to the socket too, but this will be covered with a rubber dust cap so it should be fine.

I used a rubber mallet and some gaffer tape to protect the bar, to gently ease it all into place.

Once one side was in, I loosely attached the bracket on that side to the chassis (basically so the thread caught enough, but allowed the bar to still move). I then moved onto the other side and repeated the process, you will need to use some brute force to get it in.

Attaching the second bracket was actually pretty tricky, the bar was not close enough for the threads to reach, and so I then used a ratchet strap to pull the ARB closer to the chassis. I used the lower crossmember in the engine bay as the other anchor point. This allowed me to pull the ARB closer to the threads, and then I could connect the bracket to the chassis.

As we need to tighten the wishbones up again once the engine is in, these will need to be loosened again anyway to allow access to the bolt, hopefully at that point it will be easier to secure it all again the second time!

Timelapse

Summary

• A bit of brute force will be required, It is after all meant to be a stiff bar.
• Bush colours match the coloured dot on the bar
• Dust protectors can catch on the weld area, it was hard to get a cable tie in on this part, but once tightened it looks like it will do the job nicely.
• Protect the chassis, I slipped a few times and cardboard saved the day!