Superlight 77 in the classifieds

[Steve Evil]

Just wondering if anyone knew anything, or had any thoughts about this one:

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/c...

Had my eye on it for the past week or so and currently working out which internal organs I might be able to survive without in order to fund it, or more likely, which external appendages my wife might remove if I did go ahead and buy it.

[BertBert]

Looks nice, could well be a great car. 1600 at 160 bhp should be a blast. Although I am struggling to think of a factory upgrade in 1999 that produced 160bhp on a 1600 k. Anyone with a better memory than me?

If it all checks out, is in good condition and the price could drop by £500, it would look like a good buy.

Bert

[oop north]

I don't remember any factory upgrade for the k series 1.6 that gave 160bhp in 1999 - and I had a 2000 superlight 1.6. Now (from 2002-2007) that did have 160bhp but that was with throttle bodies and lumenition gizmo. The person I bought it from (Red SLR) replaced with an R300 that had roller throttle bodies - but that had 160bhp (did I remember that right?) and was factory spec. The only factory 1.6k upgrade I know of was to go from 115 to 130 bhp- but superlight had that as standard

Anyway. Wish I still had mine :-(

[BertBert]

I'm really intrigued now, I would have thought you'd have to work quite hard to get 160bhp on the 1600 supersport. Looking at what DVA does, bolting Jenveys and an emerald onto a 1600 SS gives 150, or 160 on an 1800. So you'd have to change cams and probably port the head some to get 160 from 1600. All doable, but was never aware of the factory doing it.

I do miss my 1600ss. I reckon 160 out of the 1600 would be near perfect for me. Sadly I'm not in the market at the moment!

Bert

[Steve Evil]

Well the advert has been revised, as it was saying 180bhp out of the 1.6 which I thought was a bit extreme, so perhaps someone has brought that up for discussion already.

[Toaster]

oop north said:

I don't remember any factory upgrade for the k series 1.6 that gave 160bhp in 1999 - and I had a 2000 superlight 1.6. Now (from 2002-2007) that did have 160bhp but that was with throttle bodies and lumenition gizmo. The person I bought it from (Red SLR) replaced with an R300 that had roller throttle bodies - but that had 160bhp (did I remember that right?) and was factory spec. The only factory 1.6k upgrade I know of was to go from 115 to 130 bhp- but superlight had that as standard

Anyway. Wish I still had mine :-(

There was a Supersport R upgrade I had my old 7 converted by the factory it had roller barrels and a 6 speed box the conversion changed from 1600 cc to 1800cc and the same conversion as this one http://www.sevensandclassics.com/showroom/caterham...

[Steve Evil]

Toaster said:

There was a Supersport R upgrade I had my old 7 converted by the factory it had roller barrels and a 6 speed box the conversion changed from 1600 cc to 1800cc and the same conversion as this one http://www.sevensandclassics.com/showroom/caterham...

I was wondering if it might have been that, but then if it left the factory like that, would it not have been badged up as a Superlight R and would also be recorded as an 1800, where some checks still show that it's registered as a 1600.

[Toaster]

Steve Evil said:

I was wondering if it might have been that, but then if it left the factory like that, would it not have been badged up as a Superlight R and would also be recorded as an 1800, where some checks still show that it's registered as a 1600.

Mine was a 1600 roadsport and it wasnt re-badged, the factory should know if they had upgraded the one your looking at

[caterhamsuperlight77]

Hi Guys!

I am the current owner of the car and its nice to see a discussion on it!

I did relist the car because I didn't want to mislead or cause confusion to anyone in terms of what the output of the car was. Despite a massive folder of history and documentation the one area that is lacking is this specific upgrade. It has Caterham roller barrel throttle bodies and a lumenition ECU (is this enough for a 30bhp increase?) and the original invoice states that it was a 180Bhp upgrade (although I am thinking that was a typo at this point). The car has been dynoed in my ownership and is putting out around 160Bhp which given the weight of the car, the thing sure does fly

Out of interest as there isn't a lot of information out there about the original superlights, does anyone know what modifications over a standard superlight the superlight R would have had?

If anyone has any questions about the car buzz me an email on the advert and I will send you any info you want

Thanks everyone.

[Tango7]

caterhamsuperlight77 said:

Hi Guys!

Out of interest as there isn't a lot of information out there about the original superlights, does anyone know what modifications over a standard superlight the superlight R would have had?

SLR's were 1800's with throttle bodies and 4-2-1 exhausts. Engines had forged pistons. I think they had different camshafts too. Standard output was 190bhp on MEMS ecu but regularly changed to programmable ECU's.

Query above about power from a 1600K series : we had a 1600K running on a standard bottom end with 285 cams, flowed head and jenveys that had been DVA'd and it was 190BHP and very smooth to drive at any revs. We sold the car several years ago but I do know that its been running fine certainly until very recently.

[Toaster]

My typo going on here, the upgrade I had was from a roadsport 1600 to a supersport R (basically converts it to an R300 spec engine) its an engine upgrade i also had a 6 speed added the factory (as far as I am aware never converted a road sport to a superlight

Look out on ebay for the green coverd caterham brochure (1998) for the Superlight R and follow this linky http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Caterham-Seven-Superligh...

Edited by Toaster on Tuesday 28th July 17:24

[BertBert]

Hi Superlight77, it sure looks a brilliant car. The upgrade must have been a one off rather than a production one as we don't see them about. Caterham never really wanted to tune the 1600 above supersport levels, so good to see yours. Is it running the supersport cam? I assume the lumenition ecu is a programmable one. Again must be a one off.

Superb car, won't hang about for long!

Bert

[SidewaysSi]

God that's cheap. I thought good Superlights are around the £18k mark these days.

[caterhamsuperlight77]

BertBert said:

Hi Superlight77, it sure looks a brilliant car. The upgrade must have been a one off rather than a production one as we don't see them about. Caterham never really wanted to tune the 1600 above supersport levels, so good to see yours. Is it running the supersport cam? I assume the lumenition ecu is a programmable one. Again must be a one off.

Superb car, won't hang about for long!

Bert

Hi Bert,

Thanks for the comments. Think you are right about that, there is certainly a lot of interest.

It does have a programmable lumenition. It is also interesting to see there is another post on here where someone has just purchased a similar spec car and they are having a hard time with driving it smoothly. We had a similar issue when we purchased ours, but we took it to the wizards a Tour De Force and they remapped the ECU and now it is very smooth and delivering great power (no more bunnyhopping around town )

[BertBert]

Re-ignited by interest in Caterham projects again. I drove a 1600k with supersport cams that had a mildly ported head and Jenveys on emerald. What a hoot! Sadly it's third in the project line behind my race car and a 911 gearbox to get done

[Dave L]

I see the car is back on the classifieds, I used to own it back in 2005-2008.
Brilliant car. It was an Arrowstar conversion. A good £5k invoice iirc. Was rbtb and lumenition programmable ecu, cam and head work. I took it from 13k miles to 23k miles so it's not done much since.

Very tempted to buy it back.