£1000 Challenge
David and the Robin make it to a Reliant club rally – but how fast was he really going?
Reliant Robin
1990 RELIANT ROBIN
THE STORY SO FAR Miles driven 120… we think Total mileage 64,371 What’s gone wrong The speedo and odometer have packed up So our Robin made it, as the images here prove. Our latest £1000 Challenge mission was for it to make it to a Reliant Owners’ Club rally under its own power – but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
My £10 Tesco tent, camping chair, sleeping bag, overnight bag and – perhaps most importantly of all – crate of John Smith’s finest fitted neatly into CBA’s boot with room to spare, but it seemed reluctant to fire up. Perhaps it had been traumatised by its shakedown run, a few hours earlier, when it had witnessed another driver so determined to beat me to a supermarket car parking space that she managed to clip the adjacent car.
But once it fired up, it seemed happy enough to tackle Peterborough’s notorious dual carriageway system during rush hour without so much as a hint of mischief. The upgraded cooling system that I’d heard good things about while prepping the car for its club rally outing ( CCW, 8 May) was definitely coming good on its promises; the temperature gauge was still giving its usual high-ish reading, but the engine kept its cool in what felt like an eternity of stopstart traffic.
In fact, it was only once I’d escaped Peterborough’s clutches and set the Robin on a steady 60mph cruise towards Holbeach in Lincolnshire that it started to play tricks. The needle on the Smiths speedometer suddenly switched between giving wildly erratic, flickering readouts, delivering amusingly inaccurate readings (including, according to the readout, 15mph while overtaking a truck) and then finally stopping working altogether – not exactly ideal on a stretch of the A16 monitored by average speed cameras. So I pulled into a layby, fired up the speedometer app on my mobile phone, positioned it in a safe spot on the dashboard and ploughed on using its own, rather more accurate readouts for guidance. Annoyingly, this also meant that the miles passing beneath the Reliant’s wheels weren’t being counted.
An hour later, CBA successfully navigated the mish-mash of Lincolnshire country lanes leading to the Rose & Crown at Holbeach Hurn, where a healthy crowd of three- and four-wheeled Reliants awaited. I found myself envying the Fox camper van that its owner had already set up for a warm night at the campsite, but in the end the bargain basement tent that I’d brought along in my bargain basement car more than did the trick. In fact, the night was made even more comfortable when fellow owner Gary – who’d brought his 1985 Rialto estate along from Manchester – kindly donated a spare airbed to
CCW’s ultra-cheap home-from-home for the night!
A (relatively) comfy night later, and I discoverd that the Robin was still in the mood to play ball the following morning, firing up instantly in time for the club’s classic run for the day – a trip further up the county’s twisty roads to the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre, based at a former World War Two RAF Bomber Command base. I’m happy to report that the Robin not only made it without incident, but actually seemed to be running better than ever. Admittedly, it overran a little when I switched the engine off, but I suspect that the points just need re-adjusting.
Obviously, the speedometer also needs looking at, because once
I’d finished perusing all the old warplanes, I had to rely once again on a mobile phone app to get me home. Not something the brave pilots who originally flew out of the base would have been able to do, of course…