The Blue Rebel Van! - Engine Rebuild Content. p3

[Mally]

I've just found the south coast bit.

Too far for me really.

[barrett]

FFS man England is tiny! You can literally drive from Brighton to Scotland and back again in a day. I'll never understand the idea of cars being 'too far away'

[plasticvandan]

Not in a Rebel van you can't Worcester to Ripon was hard enough (ear plugs help)

[Marm Toastsmith]

You can literally drive from Brighton to Scotland and back again in a day.

This sounds like a challenge!

[coalnotdole]

Rebuilding A Reliant 850cc Engine - Part 1

 

 

For Context I probably say that started writing this post in May and it sat unfinished as I hadn’t bothered to sort the photos out. Some parts of this post may read like I did the work recently but all this happened months ago!

 

 

In January 2018 I started to get a bit depressed about the lack of progress on more or less all of my projects. The GTE was back from its respray and every-time I worked on it the job list got longer and longer, The two Scimitar coupés had had no meaningful progress made on them in the last 18 months as for most of that time I've been focused on the GTE. Orji the crossflow Rebel continues to fester in a lockup garage which has become worryingly full of junk...
 (December 2018 - all of this is still mostly true)




Added to that GKT was going to need something doing with the engine before the MOT ran out in April...





I'd started the ball rolling for rebuilding the old 850 in 2016 by getting the crankshaft reground by Banda engineering of Portsmouth. I'd also bought a piston and cylinder liner kit from Brook road garage. and a set of +10 Big end and Main bearings. All told about £330 of parts... which were all sat on the shelf doing nothing useful. ( technically speaking they were in a crate!)

 

The 850 I’m rebuilding was sold to me as being an unused factory exchange unit and it was fitted new in 2012. It was broken after just over 25,000 miles.

 There are no strip down photos as I forgot to take any.

 

I should say at this point I've done lots of jobs working on old engines since buying my first ‘old’ car in 2010. But I'd never done a complete engine rebuild before! (I've taken quite a few apart mind...) My mate Dave ( who posts SS1, Rebel saloon and boat & capri content on this account) has done many though so I had at least got a bit of extra support should I need it...

 

In many ways a Reliant engine is a pretty good engine to learn on. The head and block are made of die-cast aluminium in common with most modern engines yet in terms of design its a pretty conventional single cam OHV engine.

 

In my head I imagined myself making a sped up build video… start to finish all in one sitting…. Probably just as well i did not do that as all told it was on the bench for about 2 months!

 

I began by unboxing and evaluating the new parts I’d bought. At first glance you might think they were ready to fit:

 

 

Closer inspection shows that the pistons are all full of swarf.

 

 

 

 

Some careful poking got quite a bit out…

 

 

And a dunk in the ultrasound cleaner got rid of any remaining debris….

 

In the end I cleaned most of the new new components and all the old ones.

 

Finally I moved on to the unbelievably fiddly task of fitting piston rings. They are incredibly brittle and have to be fitted with care…

 

The instructions on the packet are reasonably clear, the rings are marked to show the top face, (where needed)

 

 

The scraper ring is the most difficult to fit I’d managed to fit three pistons worth and on the fourth I managed snap one!

 

 

 

Fortunately they are commonly available and I was able to get a replacement ring set for under £20…

 

 

 

 

I then moved on to strip the head down for a de-coke. This is a Barton head usually only found on very late Reliant engines (1990’s era,) they have a bad reputation and this one seems to live up to their usual standard.

 

 

I particularly object to the poor Machining work around the inlet and exhaust ports.

 

 

I did consider fitting one of the spare heavily polished and ported race heads I’ve got knocking about and fitting a random high lift cam to match… but decided against it in the end. The Barton head is probably saveable with some work to the ports but time and effort mean its easier to use a an earlier Relaint machined head.

 

Heres An assortment of clean parts on the bench waiting for the next stage:

 

 

 

I Ran a pressure washer over the block, knocked the old liners out and washed it a bit more.

 

 

 

The reliant liners are bedded with sealant to create a good seal around the water jacket. The workshop manual helpfully specifies an obscure sealant, Silcoset 152. Which appears to mainly be used by the MOD, Its quite expensive; Over £20 for a little tube.

 

 

Liners in:

 

 

Dave helpfully fitted some new the little end bushes to the con rods and reamed them to suit the new gudgeon pins.

 

 

 

I messed around for a while attempting to get a ring compressor to work with the little reliant pistons, in the end I gave up and compressed the rings with my fingers, this was much easier!

 

 

With all the pistons in. I moved on to fitting the New main bearings, I'm not fitting new thrust washers as the ones that came out look pretty good.

 

 

 

 

Crankshaft in next:

 

 

Connecting up the big ends Oiling as I go.

 

 

 

Ready to torque up the big end & the main bearing caps.

 

 

 

Continued in Part 2... Cheers for reading so far. Joe

[coalnotdole]

 

Rebuilding A Reliant 850cc Engine - Part 2

 

At this point I needed to get the existing engine out of the van, I wanted the front and backplates off it as well as the timing cover and the head.

 

Heres the offending £60 engine.

 

 

 

Reliant engines are famously light so I didn’t bother with the engine crane... but as it turns out they are surprisingly hard to lift out of an engine bay on your own. Fortunately a passing neighbour stopped and gave me a hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the engine out its pretty clear where some of the oil that leached out of the old engine was going. I will treat it to a new clutch and a carbon thrust baring when the new engine goes in.

 

 

 

The old engine being stripped of some of the Rebel specific bits I'll want on the new block

 

 

 

Back on the bench and with a front plate attached the timing could be setup, new timing chain and tensioner were used. Its also had new front / rear crank seals.

 

 

 

 

I'm missing a few photos of the Oil pump, and sump going on.

 

Heres the engine waiting to go back in, the head was left off as I'd not sorted that out yet. Dave happened to be about that weekend and if I'd waited I'd would have had to lift it in on my own!

 

 

I stripped down and refurbished the Head that came off the old 850. Its made to a much better standard than the barton one.

 

 

 

Lapping the valves in:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New stem seals:

 

 

 

Refitted springs:

 

 

 

I've gone for an old stock HG as the supply of new good ones seems to be a bit patchy at the moment. Some of the modern ones being offered for the Reliant engine are very poor quality. I did have a supplier that was making them to a DARVI-like specification but they seem to have stopped selling at the moment. Dick Harvey, produced a revised Reliant head gasket developed off the back of his 750cc racing experience. These are widely regarded as having better sealing and longevity than a standard HG.

 

 

 

As the head I'm using has been skimmed a few times Dave cut some spacers out of shim steel to go under the rockershaft to ensure that the valve clearances can actually be set correctly. (The rear one has a hole to allow oil to reach the rockershaft.)

 

 

 

Ancillaries staring to go back on.

 

 

 

I spent some money on service parts, HT leads & filters

 

 

 

Around this point one night someone jumped up and down on the roof...

 

 

 

 

Which knocked the headlining down!

 

 

 

 

Engine complete,

 

 

I've refitted the headliner again, as it was hard to drive while it was sagging down!

 

 

Heres a picture of the van out on a test run:

 

 

[Minimad5]

This thread is full of internet WIN.

[somewhatfoolish]

I have encountered this quality(filled with swarf, badly/incompletely machined, etc) of stuff in Royal Enfield spares.

[mk2_craig]

This thread is full of internet WIN.

Pisser about the boot prints on the roof though!

[Mally]

In my wisdom* I thought you had to put the head on as fast as possible to bed the liner in the silcoset before it went off..

Obviously makes no difference.

Your liners look to be quite high, maximum above the block is 6 thou I was told.

I was told this because on one of ours the liners stuck up 9 thou and the head gasket failed to seal the waterways.

Was also told that silicone on the head gasket would cure the water leak.

Very sceptical about that but it worked.

[coalnotdole]

I think the key thing is make sure that there is no difference in height between the liners and that they are all properly seated against the deck of the block. When fitting I used a substantial lump of wood and a lump hammer to ensure they were all properly home.
 
The first time I put no.1 Cylinder liner in it sat a little proud of the rest and in the end it was taken out again and redone with slightly less silicone! Too much can definately be as bad as not enough!
 
After the engine swap I chucked the van in for its MOT. - It Passed of course!
 





The rebuilt engine seems to zip along quite nicely, 850cc combined with the low ratio van rear axle means its suprisingly brisk to 50mph unladen. The new engine is probably just about run in now so I'll have to do an oil & filter change in the new year. Oil changes are amazingly easy on the Rebel, you don't even need to jack them up as you can get to the sump drain plug from the top!

I should probably sell it too. I need to focus on getting the GTE sorted, I've just commited to a large spend on the gearbox on that... (TANGENT ALERT!) I could also do with updating my fleet of cars to an economical motorway mile eater...

 

Roll on 2019,

[Eddie Honda]

Your liners look to be quite high, maximum above the block is 6 thou I was told.

I was told this because on one of ours the liners stuck up 9 thou and the head gasket failed to seal the waterways.

 

I have it my head 4 thou +/-2, with no more than 2 between pairs. But I can't be bothered to look it up and will wait for Dan to arrive

[Eddie Honda]

Pisser about the boot prints on the roof though!

Yes, looks like Sambas.

[coalnotdole]

Yes, looks like Sambas.

 

Looks like Adidas to me?

[Eddie Honda]

Yes, Sambas.

 

 

 

[Eddie Honda]

It wisnae me either!

 

 

It was yer one hiding behind the Disco.

 

 

 

[Mally]

The diffs, assuming 4.1 are worth a fortune. Oops I shouldn't have said that.

[Eddie Honda]

4.375:1 (35/8) IIRC... Horribly low gearing for an 850.

[coalnotdole]

The diffs, assuming 4.1 are worth a fortune. Oops I shouldn't have said that.

 

Desireable in banger racing circles?

[paulplom]

It wisnae me either!

 

P_20170331_122048.jpg

 

It was yer one hiding behind the Disco.

 

15462962241196479.gif

Awww, my old car. Reliable as ever?

[Mally]

Desireable in banger racing circles?

 

 

I used to race these things, really quite good. Still have one in my garage from time to time.

http://www.rebelsracing.com/

[plasticvandan]

The diff rapers axle of choice is the fox,the rebel axle being basically regal is different internally.