£500 Challenge
Reliant Robin
1990 RELIANT ROBIN THE STORY SO FAR
Miles driven Car 0 – but the wheels have travelled 154 miles! Total mileage 63,781 What’s gone wrong Nothing this week
I once met a bloke who claimed that everything on his classic was completely original – not perfect, perhaps, but unchanged since the day it left the production line. Including, it turned out, the 42-yearold tyres on which it had been driven to the event. Ahhh. You might have in read in CCW that the All Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicle Group – essentially, the group of MPs who big up the joys of classics to Westminster’s decision-makers – is currently discussing the safety risks of old tyres. Even if the rubber doesn’t have any cracks in it and the tread depth is still legal, it hardens with age, making it a lot less effective.
I know this all too well from using my own MGB GT as a guinea pig for some CCW tests a few years ago – the road noise was horrendous on old boots and it would involuntarily kick its tail out on roundabouts, but it handled far better on fresh Pirellis and the stopping distance from 50mph was slashed by a third – a potentially life-saving improvement. So the last thing I’m going to do with our £1k Robin is allow it to venture onto Her Majesty’s highways wearing tyres that aren’t up to snuff. I had a look at our Reliant’s rubber before we heaved the GRP body back on (CCW, 20 June), and discovered that it was fitted with a mixture of Pirelli Cinturato P3 and budget boots dating back to 2011. All of them were technically still legal, but I know that one of them has a persistant slow puncture, so I didn’t want to take any chances.
A few days later I took a set of four rather mucky-looking wheels – the spare had gone walkies, so the Reliant Owners’ Club kindly donated another – up to Yorkshire-based Longstone Classic Tyres. I liked the idea of having a full set of Cinturatos on the Robin to match the ones fitted to my MGB, but sadly the Italians stopped making rubber small enough for the Robin years ago. Just shows how old the tyres are! Longstone’s boss, Dougal Cawley, reckoned that two would be up for the job. Camac currently offers a crossply suitable for our Robin, but I opted for a set of Dunlop SP Sports, largely because they’re distantly related to the ones Jaguar fitted as standard to the XJ6 Series 1 when it was launched in 1968.
The team also took the decision to add inner tubes as an extra precaution, because our Reliant’s rims don’t have the inner ridge you’ll find on most classic wheels. While the SP Sports are designed to work as tubeless tyres, there’s a risk that the edge of the tyre will slip off the wheel in the event of a puncture without that ridge – and the last thing you want on a three-wheeled car is something that makes it less stable. The Robin’s wheels were mated to a set of healthy-looking Dunlops half an hour later and loaded into my own car (sadly not a Reliant) for the trip back to the CCW’s office. Can’t wait to see them being fitted onto our Robin.