£1000 Challenge

Reliant Robin

1990 RELIANT ROBIN

THE STORY SO FAR

Miles driven 207

(on the back of a lorry) Total mileage 63,781 What’s gone wrong The chassis. Which is now an ex-chassis

DAVID SIMISTER You know that things aren’t going well when the latest chapter of your classic’s restoration begins with a lorry fire. Mercifully, it wasn’t the one transporting our sub-£1k Reliant to the NEC, but when a 30-minute schlep up the M6 to the nation’s biggest resto show turned into a two-hour traffic jam, it wasn’t exactly the best of starts.

After discovering back at Parkhill Garage that things weren’t exactly hunky dory with our Robin’s undersides, we decided to send the car off to restoration rehab – so we arranged for H362 CBA to pay a visit to last weekend’s Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show, with Discovery.

So while long-suffering CCW contributor, Richard Gunn, and I were sitting helplessly in what felt like the world’s longest tailback on the way over to the NEC from Peterborough (with plenty of the show’s other exhibitors, as it turned out), last Thursday afternoon, our little Robin was heading down from the north west under the watchful eye of Andy Waters and the team at CBR Motor Bodies. I had visions of our crusty three-wheeler dismantling itself mid-trip and leaving a trail of bits somewhere outside Stafford Services, but thankfully Andy and his team looked after Reliant’s not- so-finest. By the time Richard and I rocked up at the NEC, the Robin had already made its nest on the Reliant Owners’ Club’s stand in Hall 5, alongside John Crawford’s pristine 1978 Robin MkI and Pete Huggins’ nicely preserved 1988 Rialto.

Fast-forward to Friday morning, and our £600 buy had a crack team of Reliant experts, in the form of father-and-son team Melvin and Adam Turpin and Pete Huggins. Their mission was to dissect our threewheeler on the club’s stand, remove the body and find out just how tired its undersides were, so that we’d know exactly what we are up against over the course of the car’s revival.

As I set off to help with judging for the National Car Club Awards (don’t miss our full report on pages two and three) the stand was a hive of activity. Melvin, Adam and Pete set to work on disconnecting the car’s master cylinder, removing the fuel lines and separating all manner of pipes and hoses from its cooling and fuelling systems. It’s great that the club helpfully stuck a ready reckoner of all the fiddly little jobs onto the car’s windscreen, so that perplexed showgoers could see exactly what the trio was up to.

As a small stash of bits slowly begin to pile up at the back of the stand I also learned some intriguing clues about our Robin’s birth, which helped to explain why its chassis wasn’t looking too healthy. The year before H362 CBA rolled off the Tamworth production line the Staffordshire factory site had been snapped up by a housing firm as an investment, but within a few months the recession had hit and the firm had run into trouble. Reliant struggled as a result and in the rush to return to profitability put out a run of cars which hadn’t had the same love and expense spared as their predecessors, with the rustproofing and galvanizing on the chassis being one of the first things to suffer. According to our experts, Reliants built between 1990 and 1994 suffer from more corrosion bugbears beneath the skin than most – and, naturally, our poor little Robin LX is one of the cars affected.

By mid-afternoon on the show’s opening day, there was a faint whiff of fuel as the Reliant neared its big undressing, but even then the car’s questionable construction was putting up a fight. With only three earths to disconnect, all the mechanical components sitting on the separate chassis and the body being connected by a series of bolts, separating the body from the chassis should have been fairly straightforward. But even with all those taken care of, breaking up the marriage of metal and GRP was proving to be tricky. Further investigation revealed that the carpet had been pop-riveted into the

‘There was a brief moment of applause as the bodywork soared majestically into the air, followed by an equally audible gasp of horror’

bodywork from new – and that two of those rivets had gone even further, connecting it directly to the chassis! But once the pesky rivets had been dealt with, the Robin’s body was finally ready to be lifted off. With the neighbouring Bug Club sending over a few of its own experts to help with the fiddly job and a small crowd assembled to watch the moment of truth: the 28-year-marriage between body and chassis was finally being broken up. Even CCW contributors Nick Larkin and Andrew Roberts headed over to the stand to see the car’s innards being revealed for the first time in nearly three decades – no pressure, then! There was a brief moment of applause as the bodywork soared majestically into the air, followed by an equally audible collective gasp of horror. We all knew, after the inspection 100 miles up the M6, that there would be some tin worm to tackle on the Robin’s underpinnings, but no-one was prepared for the amount of corrosion that greeted us. The entire bar at the front of the chassis was coated in a thick dollop of rust, and a section not far from the front suspension assembly had rotted away entirely – it was, according to Adam’s initial diagnosis, a few speed bumps away from collapsing. To make matters worse, the rubber on the engine mounts had perished over many years of being exposed to the elements, and the vibrations caused by the car’s undressing had caused one of them to collapse. In an instant any thought of piloting our Robin in the spring sunshine to a Drive-It Day gathering evaporated – this was going to be a much more involved revival than any of us had anticipated.

The biggest problem with the troublesome front bar, as it turns out, is that it’s virtually invisible in situ, because it’s shrouded by GRP bodywork and almost impossible to inspect properly, even when the vehicle’s on a ramp. It’s only when the bodywork is removed that it’s feasible to see it in all its glory, and H362 CBA’s was one of the worst the club’s experts had seen. By this stage, Nick and Andrew had quietly shuffled off to leave me to face up to the realities of a restoration nightmare.

But it’s not all bad news. It looks like the bodywork and mechanicals are in good order, so we reckon the Robin is still definitely worth saving, even taking this enormous setback into account. A quick chat with the experts later and a consensus quickly emerged; our Reliant’s chassis is interchangeable with models dating right the way back to the midSeventies MkI model , and sourcing a secondhand replacement is cheaper (and a lot safer) than attempting to weld up the rather crusty-looking original.

It’s going to entail a lot of hard graft, but the club has already done a sterling job of setting me on the right course with sourcing parts and getting the Robin back on the road. What I’d really like is for the threewheeler to return to the Reliant Owners’ Club stand at NEC for the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show in November as a complete and finished classic that will do the club’s display proud, not as a sorry-looking chassis sitting next to a forlornlooking dismembered body.

I’ve no doubt that this will be no mean feat, but I reckon that it’s doable, so consider the challenge accepted.

Obviously, Richard and I will leave for the NEC in November a bit earlier next time…

a nervous-looking simister entrusts the robin to the reliant Owners’ club’s experts, wondering what horrors they’ll discover beneath the GrP skin. lots, as it turned out. leFT The long list of jobs.

There’s applause as our robin’s clothes finally come off – followed by a few worried looks at the state of the chassis.

rivets attaching the carpet straight through the bodywork to the chassis was one of many unexpected challenges.

it’s off! But the experts rather than repairing it reckon that replacing the chassis is the way forward for our project.

CBA’s companions included John Crawford’s 1978 Robin and Pete Huggins’ Rialto, both of which are in rather better condition than our car.

Reliant design legend Tom Karen was kind enough to sign the Reliant’s sun visor. A poignant touch for the finished car, we hope!

The big problem holding back our Reliant resurrection – the chassis corrosion, which can be traced back to the car’s troubled birth, 28 years ago.