A PAIN IN THE NEC? HARDLY!
Our Reliant makes a triumphant return to the show venue that nearly sealed its fate earlier this year – but not without needing some last-minute repairs
THE STORY SO FAR
Miles driven 88 Total mileage 63,980 What’s gone wrong The window winder won’t go back on properly
DAVID SIMISTER Like the naughty child who always sits at the back of class with a pre-rehearsed excuse about a dog having eaten his homework, I’d left it until the last minute; it may have been the day before the NEC show, but the Robin
still wasn’t ready.
Last time H362 CBA appeared in these pages it was waiting for some new bits to be fitted to sort out its dodgy timing. We’d bought a new distributor, vacuum advance, ignition coil and some leads from Powerspark but another component we needed – a driver’s door windowwinding mechanism – was proving to be rather elusive. A search online revealed plenty of passenger door units, but none for the driver’s door.
Which is exactly when having a club membership comes in handy – I already knew from the Reliant’s lengthy stay in rehab that club expert and restorer, James Holland, keeps a stash of just about every Reliant part imaginable, because he’s the sort of chap who knows that having a dozen Reliant window winder mechanisms is the sensible thing to do when that bloke from CCW comes a-calling. One return trip to his base later and he’d managed to unearth one from his collection of unrestored Regals, Rialtos and Supervans. No longer would I have to worry about the NEC’s endless procession of entry barriers!
But then what felt like a succession of CCW outings at different ends of the country, a family commitment 200 miles away, and a horrendous case of manflu got in the way of me actually getting out and getting the repairs done.
With time running out, I roped in Peterboroughbased specialist, Craig Dawson, to try and knock some sense into our troublesome three-wheeler. As it turned out, he has a mate who races Reliant Robins and knows a thing or two about tuning the 850cc fourpot. Time was tight, but I reckoned that they’d be more than up to the challenge.
Fast forward to the morning before the Robin’s show appearance and I was genuinely wondering what state it would end up in – it left the NEC on the back of a trailer after its last show appearance, and I was determined that it would make it back under its own power this time, but it seemed to be running worse than ever on its short run out to see Craig, having been left to fend for itself in a freezing car park while I was away. I reckoned it could make it there, but it was running too rich, sounded awful and was struggling to splutter its way past 50mph. But then the phone rang – the Reliant was ready with just a few hours to spare – and Craig and his Reliantracing chum reckoned that they’d managed to get the four-pot sounding sweeter than ever, having hit it with our stash of bits, a timing gun and some motor sport know-how. They weren’t wrong – the run back to
CCW’s offices involves a quick blast through the maze of dual carriageways criss-crossing Peterborough, and it drove like a car transformed. Suddenly our 50mph car was capable of propelling itself past lorries and keeping up with German repmobiles, and the lumpy power delivery had been banished.
A lightning-quick repair in the
CCW car park to get the window winder mechanism reinstated and our Robin was finally ready to embark on its biggest journey in more than three years – and a symbolic one, because it was back to the very venue where its dangerously rotten front crossmember was uncovered in the first place. It’s managed CCW assignments and local shopping trips since its visit to the MoT testing station, but this was the one journey that really counted – it had to make it back to Brum.
The first half-hour on the country road connecting Peterborough to the A14 involved getting stuck behind a rather tatty-looking Land Rover Defender (I was actually mildly relieved that it was him holding all the lorries up, not me), but the Robin came alive in a way that I genuinely hadn’t been expecting once I got onto
the busier dual carriageways. It’s a noisy companion at the much higher speeds that it is now capable of, but quickly settled into a natural 65mph stride, occasionally venturing fasterstill in order to nip past boredlooking families in Peugeot 307s. It still sends unpleasant jolts through your spine if the front wheel inadvertently finds a pothole and has a slightly tendency to tramline if you’re not paying attention, but I genuinely enjoyed letting the little Reliant do its thing. In fact, the only bit I didn’t enjoy was the 20-minute crawl to get past a lorry that had broken down on the M6, but even then the Robin refused to misbehave.
Two hours later and the car that so many people had doubted was squeezing its way past the show stands in Hall 4 at the NEC, where a neatly-prepared space on the Reliant Owners’ Club awaited it. Even with my rubbish timekeeping and some manflu to battle with, the Robin had made it – and it had been driven there, without so much as a whimper of complaint – for once.
A journey that in reality had started six months ago with its disastrous last outing at the NEC was complete, and all the headaches, repairs, office jokes and a single embarrassing breakdown had been worth it.
All I needed to do then was to get it home again. No problem, right?