The original Caterham dashboard switchgear is starting to show it's age. It's functional but has something of a British Leyland air to it. The black plastic fascias tend to go grey with age, which doesn't help aesthetically either.
I wanted something a bit more up to date and settled on some Savage Motorsport buttons. These are 28mm recessed buttons in brushed aluminium. There's a good range to choose from, with the function engraved on the button face and trendy blue illumination.
Co-incidentally, after I installed mine the RS Performance Levante and Caterham R500 both used them, so the car looks smart and updated but still keeps in style with the current models.
There are a few caveats for these swanky switches:
A bit of creativitiy is needed with the wiring loom since these switches are not a direct replacement for the old ones. This is due to the fact that the original switches were multi-pole affairs while the new ones are much simpler.
Particular attention needs to be paid to the hazard lights and new relays need to be provisioned for the lighting circuits (the Savage switches are not designed to handle high currents- The illumination of these lights by LED is quite bright. This means you can see them well during the day if they're lit but they are distractingly bright at night. Ideally, a dimming solution is neccessary.
Here's how I've tackled it:
Savage Motorsport switches
There's a trick to getting indicator and hazard switches to work if you're replacing the original CC ones, originally devised by Chris Wyles on Blatchat:
Identify the 2 light green/brown wires that run from the hazard relay. One is connected to the centre wire of the indicator switch. Leave this one IN PLACE. The other runs to the original hazard switch. Disconnect this wire at the original hazard switch end of it and reconnect it to the output of the flasher unit (the tall relay) (light green/pink), which you will also locate at the old hazard switch. This will leave the indicator function as it is (ie: ignition must be ON to function).
Connect terminal 1 on your new switch also to the output wire of the flasher unit
Connect a diode to each of the other two wires on the indicator switch. The cathode of one diode goes to the left hand wire (green/red) and the cathode of the other goes to the right hand wire (green/white). You can conveniently find these wires at the original hazard switch rather than grubbing about at the back of the indicator switch, since I presume you are going to remove the original switch.- Connect the two diode anodes together and then connect them to terminal 2 on your new switch.
- Connect terminal A on your new switch to 2
- Connect terminal B on your new switch to ground.
That's it. When you use the indicators, the new switch LED will remain OFF, but with the new switch ON, all 4 indicators should flash and the LED on the new switch should flash too.
For the diodes, the recommend type number is P600A available from, among others, Maplins (their part number UK59P @£0.49 ea)
Re the diodes, the end with the band on the body is the cathode end. You can safely heat shrink them. They will not get hot. It is also recommend to solder them in. Tie wrapping them to the loom or similar is also a good idea.
The LED illumination in the switches is perfect for day-time running, but I've set most of mine to illuminate when the lights are on so they're mostly going to be seen at night. At night, the contrast is much greater, so the illumination is likely to be distractingly bright, especially on unlit roads. To get around this, I've wired a 100K potentiometer into the supply wires and mounted this on the underneath of the wiper-motor mount. This means I've now got a discreet dimmer switch to let me adjust the brightness.