£1000 Challenge
Reliant Robin
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven None this week Total mileage 63,781 What’s gone wrong The stereo’s in the wrong place
DAVID SIMISTER I reached a milestone that I’d been dreading with our £1k Challenge at a service station just outside Portsmouth. Whisper it quietly, but I’ve now driven the Reliant’s opposite number in these pages – features ed Chris Hope’s Rover Tomcat – further than I’ve driven my own bargain-priced Relaint Robin.
The 216 Coupé performed admirably on its adventure to Le Mans and back ( CCW, 18 July) but while Chris has been busy sorting out its poorly idle, the car that my wife described as the lovechild of Thunderbird 4 and Thomas The Tank Engine is coming along in leaps and bounds.
H362 CBA is beginning to look much more like a car since we picked up its new tyres – even though the body’s been back in place for a few weeks now, it’s clear that the rest of its components are coming together, and making it look much more like the finished product. It’s also reassuring to know with cast iron certainty that there is absolutely no hidden rot waiting to catch us out, given our decision to rip its clothes off and change its underwear.
Not only has the glassfibre body been bolted down firmly into place, but the thermostat housing has been reinstated, the starter motor and water pump have been checked and put back in their rightful places, the carburettor has been cleaned up and reunited with the 848cc four-pot and the car’s seatbelts are back where they should be.
The Reliant Owners’ Club’s James Holland has also taken the liberty of cutting out some rubbing strips, which have been added at the point where the floorpan meets the chassis at the rear end of our car. Apparently even Reliants in rather better fettle than ours can pick up vibrations and transmit them up through the bodywork, leading to a shuddering sensation when driving – and the strips will go a long way to making sure our car drives smoothly, particularly on motorway journeys.
The good news is that all of the car’s fundamentals are as they should be, but as anyone who’s ever tackled a resto will know, it’s the fiddly little jobs that can often take up the most time. James freely admits that he’s dreading fitting the Fiesta MkII headlights (Reliant, being Reliant, apparently decided to fit them in the most awkwardly non-Ford fashion that it could think up), and the brakes still need bleeding. Then there’s reinstalling the steering box, connecting up the radiator, and repainting and refitting the fuel tank, which is solid but covered in decades of surface rust.
We’ve also decided to remove the Ford-branded Premium Sound radio/ cassette player, because it’s been mounted rather crudely to the underside of the glovebox, rather than in the proper cutout panel that Reliant provided when the car was new. We’re sure that it works a treat (and that there’s a Capri MkIII somewhere crying out for it), but the thought of a passenger’s knees being shredded by its edges in an emergency stop doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.
Once all that’s been done, it’s time for the big jobs – taking it for the final shakedown run (on private land, obviously) and then booking it in for the dreaded MoT.
Looking forward to it!