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Make no mistake, this tour whilst not being track orientated, it will be taking on some serious mountain passes.  You can expect to place demands on the cars operative systems that would exceed those of a few track days. Adequate preparation and carrying a sensible, but not necessarily burdensome selection of spares, will pay dividends.  The tour will have some spares and support crew.  However we would hope for example that cars will not embark on this undertaking with well worn brakes or clutches etc.  If you are in any doubt about the amount of material on your pads or brake shoes, replace them before you leave AND carry spares!

Support van equipment and spares package

Basic preparation

Brakes

Lubricants

Hydraulic fluids

Tyres

Recovery insurance

Paperwork

Breakdown equipment

Car Preparation without tears.

1)      Check tyre pressures, Tread Depth, Wheel Tightness, and general condition, If not at least 4mm tread Replace.

2)      Check Brake system, inc pad wear/shoe wear, pedal travel and fluid level, also check all joints in brake lines and flexibles for abrasion damage.

3)      Check front wheel bearings and adjust as necessary.

4)      Check tightness of all suspension and steering components paying particular attention on de dion cars to the rear A frame bush.

5)      Check all shock absorber bushes and ensure there are no oil leaks from body of units.

6)      Check front wheel alignment

7)      Check all fluid levels and empty all catch tanks

8)      Check all manifold bolts for tightness and check exhaust integrity especially collector unions and rear bobbin mounts,

9)      Check alternator belt and obtain and carry a spare similarly with dry sump pump belt.

10)  If you are driving a car with belt driven cams when did you last check your belt if never do it now if its done more than 12K miles bearing in mind the thrashing you are now going to give it REPLACE IT! And carry a spare.!!

11)  Check cooling system if it hasn’t been flushed in past year do so, and replace coolant/inhibitor.  Temps on this Tour will be high it would be as well to add Water Wetter,

12)   Check adjustment on both clutch and throttle cables. On Caterhams fit new clutch cable if it hasn’t been changed in last 12 mths. and obtain and carry both cables as spares.

13)  See others for essential fluids.

14)  Check all seat belts for fraying and bolts for security

15)  Check your fire extinguisher is in test; if you haven’t got one invest in one now!

16)  Top up washer bottle and replace wiper blades.

17)  Check securing bolts on front cycle wings and rear guards.

18)  Carry tools yourself to allow you to change any belt or cable on the car. 

Have a good tour if you do all this, it is not your fault if you need my services on tour and I will not eat your head off.

jj

Brakes

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 This tour will be very hard on your car, much more so than any previous tour – we will be covering around 4000 miles during the two weeks of the tour, more than half of those miles will be on tight, twisty mountain roads, these will be real mountain roads, not those namby, pamby things that they have in Scotland. This will be very hard on your brakes – harder than a track day, actually harder than several track days! On last year’s recce we had more brake wear than on the previous 10 trackdays including several thousand hard miles to Finland and back – the tour includes even more mountain passes than the recce run!

Before you leave you should check that disks or drums are in good condition, and are not approaching the end of their useful life – it’s impractical to carry spare discs and drums on the tour, and it will be a total pita to source and fit new ones on the way round – we will be a long way from any decent motor parts stockist, or even scrapyards so we will have to make do with parts that we are carrying with us.

You will also need to check the friction material too, even if the pads have been changed recently you will need to carry spares – most sevens use pretty soft pads that are unlikely to survive for the entire tour – even cars running very hard materials like Mintex 1166 or Pagid RS14’s are likely to lose a lot of material in the mountains. A spare set of brake pads uses very little space in the car and will stop you having to crawl along some of the best sevening roads in the world after you have shagged your brakes.

It is critical that all lubricating parts of the car are checked and serviced shortly before the trip. We will be doing almost 4000 miles, the recommended minor servicing interval is 3000 miles. What's more the mileage will include track miles (30 times more wearing to the car than road miles) and many of the road miles will be extremely punishing. No need to bring enough for a complete replacement as we'll be able to source locally in the worst case.

Hydraulics

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Change my brake fluid? Why would I want to, they work perfectly. 

Do they?

Brake fluid deteriorates over time & it absorbs moisture. This is a slow process so you probably wont have realized but the performance of your brakes will have deteriorated too. You may not notice it so much around town but when you really need to brake is when they'll let you down.  

Imagine the scene, flashing down an Italian Pass straight into hairpin followed by straight into hairpin. The brakes are getting hotter & hotter & not having a chance to cool down. Every time you hit the pedal it takes a little more travel & a little more effort to scrub off speed then something happens, you brake hard & nothing!!........

Why does this happen? Well the heat, and we're talking hundreds of degrees here, has radiated from the brake disks & calipers to the fluid in the pipe. Good new fluid can cope with this but old fluid , saturated in moisture cannot & it boils, creating gas & hey presto you got air in your brakes & you cant stop!

Renewing your brake fluid should be done at least once every 2 years as routine maintenance but is highly recommended before a tour as well. Most cars use standard DoT 4 fluid available from any garage. Some newer cars use synthetic fluid (DoT 5.1) or fancy racing fluids with high boiling points.

Converting to the latest whizzo fluid isn’t strictly necessary for  touring, simply replace what you've already got. While you're at it......why not do the clutch as well. It's easily forgotten but it uses the same fluid & also deteriorates over time.

Hydraulic fluid is readily available at most garages so no need to bring 5 litres, but a small bottle tucked away in the boot would do no harm. Also a complete set of master cylinder & wheel cylinder seals only costs a few quid & take up virtually no room so why not get yourself a set & bring them too.

Sods law says if you bring them then you wont need them........but if you don't :))

Finally as with all pre-tour maintenance do it WELL IN ADVANCE! If you leave it til the last minute & you suddenly find you have to order parts, they may not arrive in time. Or if something goes wrong (snapped bleed nipple is a favorite) you'll need time to fix it.

Tyres

(Contibruted by V7)

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Experience has taught nearly all previous tourers that “tyres” are an issue that focuses everyone's attention some time during the tour.

1.      Previous experience During the Scandi2000 tour there was some concern that some of the softer compound tyres wouldn't last the 2000-odd miles expect, particularly as there were 4 trackdays planned. With this in mind one of the tourers arranged to have a shipment of tyres sent to Scandi before the tour, where Vinnie graciously accepted delivery, stored them and brought them with him in the support truck. In addition, most tourers started the tour on new or nearly new tyres anyway.

 I did not.

 I started on new rears but forgot about the fronts, which were about half worn before the first trackday and almost totally bald after that first trackday. Before the tour the thinking was that rear tyres would wear fastest, so I had only arranged a delivery of a second set of rear tyres. No fronts (remembering that some people have different sized fronts and rears). I finished the tour with the following: 

• Not having had more than a few laps at each track

• A set of part worn rears on the car (these were the new ones I started with)

• A set of bald - nearly through to the canvas - fronts on the car

• A set of brand new and unused rears strapped to the roll bar.

Stupid and very irritating. 

On subsequent tours I have managed to finish the tour with “only just” legal tyres. The differences were (and you need to consider this and weigh up your own pattern of usage carefully): 

• I started with new tyres on the car

• We had fewer trackdays

2.      Types of tyres I admit that I suffer from tyres wearing quickly because of the type I favour. Between all the tourers it is fair to say we have probably tried most or all variants commonly fitted to Se7ens. The following is a guide to those tyres favoured by Se7eners.

 Avon ACB10  Considered to be the softest and least wear resistant, there are several compounds of these available. The hardest compound, fitted by Caterham as standard equipment on the SL and SLR, can last up to 6000 miles on the front and 4000 miles on the rear before they are declared illegal. These distances account for road mileage only. Track mileage will destroy a set of these tyres very very much quicker. The softest compounds would probably not last the length of a summer tour. 

ACB10s are one of most expensive tyres. Its low wear resistance exaggerates its purchase price.

 The ACB10 is a crossply construction tyre making it easier to adjust the car’s settings to maximise its potential. The stiffness of their sidewall makes their steering response very sharp. In addition the fibreglass used in the carcass of the tyre is light in weight making this tyre one of, if not the, lightest road legal tyre available.

 Unfortunately, there are downsides to the crossply construction - ACB10s are known for tramlining quite severely. The wider the steered (front) wheels, the more steering effort is required (very heavy) and the worse is the tramlining.

 The other downside of ACB10s is that they are very poor wet weather tyres. The lack of any deep tread pattern makes them particularly “interesting” when driving on roads with any standing water. Don’t even think about using them in snow.

 ACB10s can be surprising though. Get enough heat into them and they will surprise even the most sceptical with their impressive grip in all but the wettest of conditions.

 To get the most out of ACB10s your camber setting need to be very low. Typical rear camber setting is 0.25° as opposed to 1.5° or greater for radial tyres. Excessive camber leads to the inner shoulder of the tyre wearing very quickly.

Avon CR500 – A relatively new tyre on the market, designed as a lightweight all-weather alternative to Avon’s ACB10 (above), it was found to have slightly better wear characteristics than the ACB10 but originally tended to overheat on dry roads leading to exaggerated wear rates. Avon has altered the compound to this tyre recently, and is said to be the perfect all weather tyre, albeit at a price.

 The CR500 is a radial tyre but despite that is still very light and comes in sizes not available in other makes and although a radial, can be used quite successfully on camber settings more normally associated with crossply tyres. In fact, some people claim they wear more evenly on crossply camber settings and yet do not appear to suffer unduly from loss of grip.

Yokohama A032R – Everyone has seen this tyre. Its tread pattern is virtually legendary, known as the “tusk” pattern. In the dry this tyre offers grip almost as good as the ACB10, yet is much better in the wet. However, this does not necessarily make this tyre a good wet weather tyre. It still has very minimal tread depth.

 The A032R comes in a good range of sizes and 3 distinct compounds. The wear rates are similar to, if not slightly better than ACB10s but at half the price this tyre offers very good value for money. They are more widely available than Avon tyres and appear to be the choice of more Se7eners than any other tyre.

 All Yokohama tyres are of radial construction so do not suffer the tramlining of crossplies

Yokohama A021R -  Originally designed as a wet weather race tyre, this has become the standard choice for people wanting a hard wearing “sticky” tyre. It comes in about as many different sizes as the A032R but in only one compound. In the oft-preferred 13” x 6” wheel sizes, the A021R can be had in 2 profile sizes. The taller and possibly less “racy” 70 profile is of particularly good value for money, costing a mere £35 from places such as George Polley.

 This is generally regarded as the most sensible tyre for touring as it offers the best compromise between wear resistance and high grip level regardless of weather conditions. Many people prefer the predictability that is felt when using these tyres to any other, regardless of price.

Michelin Pilots, or other standard fitment tyre – Caterham and Westfield, who offer turnkey solutions, tend to send their lower powered cars out with unnecessarily hard compound tyres such as the Michelin Pilots or some other Avons (CR332 or something). These are awful tyres for a Se7en, being designed for much heavier cars. Their level of grip is inferior but they are hard wearing and will never present a problem over the course of a tour if there is more than 3mm of tread left at the start of the tour.

Although they have plenty of tread depth, they are not very good in the wet owing to their hard compound. In the dry, especially on tracks, they are hopeless as you are unable to get them hot enough to work properly owing to the lightweight of the Se7en.

3.      Orientation of tyres There is much written about the directional properties of tyres. Some people ignore the arrows stamped on the sidewalls indicating direction of rotation, preferring to use them backwards. The arrow indicates the direction that will best avoid delamination of a tyre rather than any superior wet weather water-pumping ability. Make sure that you know what the correct way round for your tyres is before venturing out on track.

4.      Trackday tyres and spares Since the Scandi2000 tour, it has been customary to take spare tyres for those people using the softer types of tyres. More recent times have seen people bring more than one complete set of wheels. This makes it possible to have a set of tyres for the track and a set for the road. In addition, it allows the use of non-road legal tyres to be used at circuits.

 The disadvantage of this approach is the weight and size of the overall “luggage” attached to your car. Granted, the tyres can be off-loaded into the support truck once you meet with it, but it is not at all certain at this time of writing what support truck arrangements will be in place in the future. Certainly it is almost impossible to cater for a complete set of wheels and tyres for every car signed up to a tour (tours having typically over 30 cars now), although this is an unlikely scenario owing to the fact that many people still prefer to use less esoteric tyres and therefore are not in need of spares or “trackday specials”.

 Incidentally, Peter Carr has an ingeniously designed tyre rack which bolts directly onto the roll bar of a Se7en allowing you to take (at least) 4 complete wheels and tyres in perfect safety. Whether you’d want that lot strapped to the back of your car for a whole tour is unlikely.

5.      In general (a summary) A tour will hammer your tyres. Factors as to your ability to reach the end of a tour with legal tyres are as follows: 

• Length of tour. We are now up to a full 14 days and 3000 miles.

• Type of roads. The point of a tour is to pick interesting roads. We will not be doing 3000 miles on “low wear” motorways. You ought to expect 40,000 corners and at least as many places where you’ll be braking and accelerating hard.

• Type of tour. Different tours have a different emphasis. Both of the Scandi-based tours have had a heavy trackday schedule which is punishing on tyre wear. Although the Euro2001 tour was (and Italy 2003 tour is) less oriented on trackdays, the schedules include a trackday near to the end of the tour. So you think you’re safely home with a barely legal set of tyres and “bam” you’ve destroyed them on the last day of the tour at the circuit.

Compulsory Equipment

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The following instructions relate to equipment that you carry in your car. 

If stopped by the authorities they will take a pretty dim view of the “its in the support truck that is bound to be with us within the next couple of hours, honest Officer”.

Key:

C   = Compulsory,  R   = Recommended

Summary: You MUST have in your car

First Aid Kit & Warning Triangle: Try to keep these easy to get at. Hopefully you won't need the first aid kit, but the chances of a car suffering a fault of some kind on the tour are, lets face it,  fairly high. No matter how minor the fault you may well find yourself on a narrow and twisty road on a mountain side with traffic unaware of your predicament until the last minute.  The ability to deploy your triangle quickly and prominently may save further incident.

*Spare bulbs: Believed compulsory now in France and Germany

Tow Rope: Depending on when and where a breakdown occurs, the ability to self-recover a car to a point where it can be looked at in safety may well be a real life saver.  We strongly recommend people carry one - and check you have towing eyes available.

And Headlamps MUST be Adjusted.

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PLUS

1.       GB Sticker

Compulsory.  Display the appropriate identification letter on the rear of your car (GB sticker for those with UK registered cars).

2.          Insurance:

Green card

Not compulsory but strongly recommended by AA/RAC.  Obtain an International Motor Insurance Certificate (green card), from your motor insurer.

Inform YOUR Insurance Company.

Compulsory.  You must inform your insurance company that you are travelling abroad and give them the dates and countries.  Check you are insured, just in case there is some small print you are not aware of. 

3.       E111 form – Health Care Abroad (EU countries)

Optional, but highly desirable.  Obtain form E111 located at the back of a leaflet called Health Advice for Travellers (Ref T6) which can be obtained from main post offices in the UK or by calling freephone 0800 555777. You must produce this form if you or your family are taken ill or require treatment when you are abroad in European Economic Area Countries.

4.          Registration Document.

Compulsory.  Bring your car registration document with you.  If you cannot obtain the original you will need a letter of authority from the owner and a Vehicle on Hire Certificate (VE103B) instead.

5.          Passport

Compulsory.  Obvious I know, but ….Check you have a full 10 year passport which is valid for the full period of your journey.  

6.          Driving Licence

Compulsory.  Ideally the new style crdit card type WITH paper licence.  For ITALY, holders of old style green licences require an International Driving Permit when driving any vehicle in Italy, which is available from the RAC/AA.  Green style licences can be exchanged by completing DVLA form D1 from any post office

7.       MOT

Optional, but highly desirable.

8.          Speed Limits

Break them at your peril – ask Hoopy for more information J

Note:  Contrary to public opinion, these are KPH NOT MPH!!!

9.       What Happens if I have an Accident…etc

http://www.drive-alive.co.uk/driving_tips.htm http://www.ideamerge.com/motoeuropa/index.html 

“The Steps to Take in Case of an Accident

To accomplish some of the steps that I describe below, see the Motorists' Phrasebook chapter for useful phrases in eight European languages. If you have a European Accident Statement form in your glove compartment or driver's-side door, get it out and use it to record the information I mention below. On the EAS it doesn't matter which vehicle you designate as "A" and which you designate as "B". But be sure to have the other driver sign the form. Or if the other driver produces it—and if when completed it's acceptable to you—make sure you sign it and take a carbon a copy. You should mail a copy of your copy to your insurer. Required procedures are more lax in some countries, such as the United Kingdom and Sweden; see the next paragraph for the procedures to follow in such countries.

• ·  If you must move the vehicles, first mark with chalk the position of their wheels on the pavement.

• ·  Note the license number of the other vehicle and whether the vehicle is right- or left-hand drive.

• ·  Note the full name, address, and occupation of the other vehicle's driver. Note also the number and other information on their driver's license. If the other driver does not own the vehicle he or she was driving, try to note the above information about the owner too.

• ·  Note the names and addresses of persons injured and the nature of their injuries.

• ·  Try to determine the names, addresses and occupations of witnesses.

• ·  Note the date, time, and exact place of the accident. Make a rough sketch showing the position and speeds of the vehicles both before and at the instant of the collision, indicating also the directions in which the vehicles were traveling. Note any signals that were given by yourself and the other driver immediately before the accident.

• ·  Note the condition of the brakes, lights, and tires of both vehicles.

• ·  Note the weather and road conditions.

• ·  Photograph the damages and vehicle positions from several telling angles.

• ·  It is usually compulsory to contact the police when the accident involves personal injury. If this is the case and you're in a populated area, stick to the spot like glue and wait for a police officer; if it seems no police officer will arrive soon, lock your vehicle and go with the driver of the other vehicle to call a policeman. In some countries, however, especially in the South, it may be acceptable to abstain from involving the police in an accident that doesn't cause personal injury. In such a case, the accident may be settled by a small exchange of funds between drivers or by filling out a European Accident Statement form and mailing it to the respective insurance companies. See the appropriate country chapter to determine the requirements of the particular country you're in.

• ·  The police officer will make out a report in triplicate. The report will state where the accident occurred, the names of both owners and their insurance companies, and the damage done.

• ·  Note the address of the police to whom the accident was reported and the names and badge numbers of the attending officers.

• ·  Accidents involving a third party must be reported immediately to the appropriate insurance bureau of the host country; see your Green Card for details.

• ·  Record the date and time of any correspondence you have with an insurance company, and note the name of the representative with whom you speak.

• ·  Contact your insurance company; they'll probably tell you to make a copy of your copy of the police report and send it to them.

• ·  Under no circumstances should you sign any document or make any statement—especially an admittance of guilt—without the advice of a lawyer or competent official of the local automobile club.

• ·  If you own the vehicle and you plan to ship it home and if the vehicle is still safe to drive, ask your insurance company if they'll cover repairs done in your home country. If they will, wait until you return home to have the vehicle repaired. The damage to the vehicle will substantially lower its value; thus the duty and taxes you must pay upon importing the vehicle will be lower.

• If you're involved in an accident in a country such as the United Kingdom or Sweden where the required post-accident procedure is more lax, and the accident causes damage or injury to any other person, vehicle, animal not in your vehicle, or to roadside property, you must do the following.

• ·  Give your and the vehicle owner's name and address and the registration number of the vehicle to anyone having reasonable grounds for requiring them.

• ·  If you don't give your name and address at the time of the accident, report the accident to the police within 24 hours. Moreover, you should within seven days present your insurance certificate to the police at any police station in the country where the accident occurred. “

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