Final fettling
Built live in three days, the Rebel just needs finishing off
I’m not sure where the time has gone since we returned triumphant from the NEC with ‘just a few jobs left to do’ on the Rebel before it would be ready for the road. However, three months have passed and not much has happened to it due to various other calls on my time as well as the PC workshop. But with summer marching on, the time has come to fulfil our commitment to former owner Graham Catchpole, that the Rebel with a cause would hit the road this summer on a road run between Colchester and Papworth Hospitals, before being sold to raise money for NHS Charities. The Rebel will also be leading PC’S ‘Britain’s Favourite Classic Charity’ runs (see p12), so we’d better pull our fingers out and get the project finished!
I popped down to PC HQ with workshop editor Matt Tomkins a few weeks ago to reacquaint myself with the van and make a list of the parts and tasks required before it can hit the road once more. Although the van looked finished by the end of the three days on the Classic World Live Stage at the NEC, smoke and mirrors played a huge part in this apparent completion. The battery, for example, was held in place with cable ties, the wiring was incomplete (we’d inadvertently ordered a Rebel 600 loom that would require significant modification to reach the dynamo, control box and wiper motor, all of which are in different positions in the earlier model), only the audience-facing door was built up due to a quarter-light which would require repair, the dashboard was rested in place, the threads for its securing bolts requiring replacement and although the lights front and rear were fitted, they weren’t connected.
What’s the catch?
The threads of the captive fixings were full of paint and required tapping out, each one being a laborious and time-consuming job. There was also still the need to carefully check through each and every one of the new or refurbished
components, to ensure that they were all working as Reliant had intended.
Remanufacturing missing parts and modifying substituted one are now the main time sponges that this project faces, with many components unique to this rare model. One critical stumbling block is the missing rear door catch. It’s unique to the Rebel, as far as I am aware, and neither the boxes of parts which came with the project nor my extensive stocks of new and used Reliant parts were able to provide a replacement. However...
Fortunately, some months ago, Matt had taken a trip to Surrey to meet Mike Harding and the team from Harding Auto Services. Mike was keen to show off his computer-guided milling machine which allows him to reproduce unobtainable parts for classic cars, and with this in mind Matt picked up the phone.
Mike has kindly agreed to 3D scan, CAD model then CNC mill a replacement latch based on the tired example removed from my own Rebel, which has proved a useful point of reference throughout this project. This is a real boon, because without Mike’s skills and his ability to remanufacture one-off or small-batch components, the sad cycle of dismantling saveable cars to restore others cannot be broken. What’s more, the replacement aluminium latch should be far more durable than the brittle plastic original. It will probably even outlast the rest of the car!
Made to measure
On the subject of remanufacturing parts, back at my workshop I got busy with another of the components that was missing at the time of the show – the battery tray. Once again using my own Rebel as a point of reference, I used angle iron to replicate the original and provide a strong framework which could be mounted to the inner wing and, via a supporting leg, the chassis back at PC towers. I also removed my Rebel’s rubber floor mats and packed them, along with a roll of the correct-pattern rubber sheeting, into the back of my Reliant Fox, and headed back to the workshop. Matts George and Tomkins met me there and, once the kettle had boiled, soon I had set them both to work. Production editor George set to work cutting out a set of floor mats while Tomkins removed the dashboard. The dash should be fixed with a pair of bolts each side plus a line along the bottom edge, but unfortunately, every last fixing thread had a snapped stud corroded into it. No matter, as painter Steve Brown (who’s own epic Land Rover resto you can read about on page 28) had noted this and filled over the holes in the lower dashboard before painting it in