Project A Red Rebel Restoration - UPDATED: 14 months of (non)progress

[coalnotdole]

Spent a couple of hours on the Rebel this morning - I've had a set of Black Poly-bushes made up with stainless steel inserts rather than the more usual plated steel ones.

The hope is that these new "cotton reel" type bushes will stop an issue i've been having with the wishbones slowly migrating backwards along the original type plain rubber bushes until the wishbone itself is rubbing on the chassis mounting brackets! (maybe less sudden/hard braking might also help!)

 

Whilst I had the wishbones off I also trial fitted my new custom made disc brake conversion which I described in the previous post.

 

This was the first time I'd tried the setup on the car as it had been designed & built on the bench in the workshop referencing only a spare 12" wheel and some crude dimensions I'd taken off the wishbones!.

 

Heres some photos taken on my phone showing the passenger side in place:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only one issue - My track-rod ends were custom made by Amsteer in staffordshire with uprated sized ball's and sockets. With the new disc brakes the reduced clearance means that the gators on these larger track-rod ends just rub on the back of the discs!

I'm hoping to find some slightly smaller gators I can fit tomorrow to solve the issue otherwise its a case of getting some smaller track-rod ends made or spacing the steering arm off the back of the vertical link slightly.

All in all I'm fairly pleased as the callipers clear the wishbones at full lock and the geometry all looks like it should work!.

 

Rubbing track-rod gator:

 

Thanks for Reading,

Dave

[beko1987]

Ah fuck I've just splazzed in my pants...

[Honey Badger]

Epic thread, the level of knowledge and attention to detail you have is amazing.

 

Seeing your Scimitar and the Rebel makes you wonder why they didn't sell more cars, the styling was pretty good and the engineering seems well thought out?

[Rocket88]

Fantastic stuff..............

[RedSparrow]

This is great, a proper restoration.

I.e. not like me grafting knackered second hand bits onto a car.

[Cavcraft]

fab stuff, I'm always really jealous of people like yourself and your skills.

[coalnotdole]

Well the Rebel now has Disc brakes on both sides! I managed to get hold of some smaller gators, theres just enough clearance between the new gators and the disc to slip in a couple of blue rizla papers*

 

Having taken it for a quick drive to the chip-shop it appears that a rivet on the inside of the passenger side wheel is just catching on the calliper so I'll do some fettling with the grinder tomorrow!

 

Think the pads need to bed-in a bit as the stopping distance is awful!

 

Also got all the front wishbones and anti-roll bar changed over to polybushes so feel a vague sense of acheivement!

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

*I don't smoke so this is a guess based on youthful experience of Class C roll ups.

[jonny69]

I seem to have missed this one each time. What's the engine plan and spec? NICE bit of polishing.

[coalnotdole]

Epic thread, the level of knowledge and attention to detail you have is amazing.

 

Seeing your Scimitar and the Rebel makes you wonder why they didn't sell more cars, the styling was pretty good and the engineering seems well thought out?

 

The Scimitar was a huge success for Reliant - at the peak of production they couldn't make them fast enough and there was a fair size waiting list... The Rebel suffered during the first months after its launch from the fact that it was priced higher than the Mini and Reliant seemingly decided not to market it aggressively enough.

When Rebel sales finally picked up in the late 60's through to 73 it coincided with Reliant changing production of three wheelers from regals to robins and as the Rebel shared many components with the regal they stopped production!.

 

 

 

This is great, a proper restoration.

I.e. not like me grafting knackered second hand bits onto a car.

 

Its mostly using secondhand components - I just spend a lot of time grit-blasting and painting them! The callipers used for the brake conversion started off seized solid and with two snapped off bleed screws.

 

 

 

I seem to have missed this one each time. What's the engine plan and spec? NICE bit of polishing.

 

The engine will be 750cc using a NOS (New Old Stock) engine block and components.

Strapped centre main,

NOS Big valve head,

Oversize (A Series) cam followers,

High lift cam,

NOS Lightened flywheel,

NOS Polished crank & rods,

NOS Hepolite Pistons,

NOS SU electric fuel-pump with solid state positive earth conversion,

NOS positive earth Alternator,

NOS Non vacuum-advance distributor,

Dellorto FZD semi downdraft carburettor,

Lightened rocker-gear on steel pedestals,

External camshaft-driven oil-pump conversion,

(I do have the kit to dry-sump the engine but unless it gains me enough clearance to fit a proper steering rack under the engine then I wont bother, as I imagine it will cause a whole world of pain come insurance time)

 

It's going to be running the slightly larger than original clutch off a Ford Fiesta which is hydraulically operated and the gearbox is a higher ratio than original. 

 

How well it will work is anyones guess! I've chosen the 750 rather than the more usual 850cc reliant engine as they're both the same bore but with a shorter throw crank in the 750 which should keep piston speeds down and make it a bit more responsive.

Flywheel weight is something I've guessed at really - Its a little bit lighter than a normal 850cc flywheel but nowhere near as light as the ones used by 750 formula racers with straight-cut close ratio boxes who spend the whole race with the engine at 8000rpm, I'm hoping there'll be enough torque but if not i'll stick a heavier lump in there!.

 

Dave

 

PS I only use the car for driving to the shops!

[coalnotdole]

Having clocked up a few miles with the new disc's I thought I'd stick up a couple of pictures. I'll try and take some showing the wider front track when I get a chance - think its increased by 3" overall. Unfortunately as the tyre sidewalls are now in line with the lip of the wheel arches this now means that if you compare one side to the other you can tell that the body is not quite symmetrical!

 

The polybushes have definitely stiffened up the front end a bit, I've ordered some adjustable rose jointed drop-links for the anti-roll bar which should allow me to get it set up even better.

 

Offside, I did contemplate having the dust shields polished stainless steel but decided black looked more in keeping:

 

 

 

This is one of the Smaller gators I've fitted, it just clears the disc at all angles of articulation (look worse in the photo than it actually is)

 

 

 

Nearside:

 

 

 

The springs supplied with the new shocks appear to be a bit short so I have a feeling i'll have to order some replacements, Also need to phone up HEL and order some braided stainless brake lines an inch longer than the ones currently fitted (this is at full lock and although not stretched the hose is not quite as relaxed as I'd like):

 

 

 

Crap Photo: Girling Type 14 callipers are a pretty tight fit in the 12" rims!, Had to grind a little bit off the side of the calliper as it was just rubbing on the rivets inside the rim. Type 12 callipers would have been a much easier fit but wouldn't have had as much stopping power:

 

 

Cheers for reading, It's always good to get comments and feedback - even if it is only people telling me what a mentalist I am!

 

Dave

[coalnotdole]

Long time no updates - The Red Rebel has mostly been sat in the car park and used only for short journeys to the shops as the current engine is so terminal I don't have much faith in it (although It's done thousands of miles more than I expected it to in the first place so will probably go another five or six thousand just to spite me!)

 

I've slowly been progressing with the sexy replacement engine which I've now decided to Dry Sump

 

The original Reliant Oil setup has a mini type vane pump in the sump driven off the bottom of the distributor drive - When the 750 Formula guys used the engines for racing they tended to fit Ford crossflow pumps driven off the end of the camshaft instead. Some racers did dry sump the engines as well in order to fit them under lower body configurations.

I had several 750 Racing timing covers which had been cast to take pumps and I originally planned to use one of these but things have evolved somehwhat...

These photos show some of the resulting long and expensive project.....

 

 

Engine sat on Joes bench on the day i decided to commit to dry sumping mocked up with a second hand 750 Formula pump I'd bought a few years ago:

 

 

Racers used toothed belts rather than vee belts as theres very little clearance for the standard pulleys:

 

 

Showing the hilarious planned fitment of a positive earth alternator instead of the original dynamo:

 

 

Polished and balanced crank, strapped center main etc etc:

 

 

Cast alloy Dry Sump which I got off a 750 Formula champion years ago:

 

 

 

 

This shows the inside of that 750 formula timing cover with a ford pump fitted - the drive shaft is ground down to a peg which fits into a slotted plate bolted to the camshaft sprocket:

 

 

 

 

The (Incredibly rare)Ambica Engineering Formula Ford Pump I had turned out to be shagged inside so I bought a Secondhand Titan 5 port Ford Crossflow Drysump Pump off Ebay, When it turned up I realised i Wanted a four port instead so bought another off ebay which turned out to be some far eastern clone of the Titan one and wasn't very nicely made.

Being unhappy with the peg drive system for use in a roadcar I wanted some sort of self aligning coupling.

 

Further research showed that you can get a Titan pump with a self aligning drive, but its main body is cast as one piece along withe the timing cover for its intended FWD ford application so was useless to me.

I wondered if it would be possible to take the drive shaft and internals along with the self aligning drive from this FWD pump and fit it into a Titan Crossflow sidemount pump body. Not having the finances to just spend £600 on both pumps and see if it was possible I decided to ring Titan and ask for measurements of the shaft and coupling used in the FWD pump.

 

Now if some joker rang me up asking about putting parts of one product into a modifyed body from another product and then fitting it to an entirely differant application to either of the original products intended uses I'd probably tell them to get lost. The people at Titan were unbelievebly helpful (they seem to do a lot of stuff for defence and formula motorsport so maybe they're used to dealing with mad requests)I spoke to the head of design and he got the drawings out of the storeroom and gave me the dimensions which gave me the cinfidence to order the parts.

 

 

On the right is the first 5 port pump from ebay, middle is the 4 port clone and left the brand new Titan body after I;ve milled the locating nose off and counterbored the remaining stub:

 

 

FWD pump rotor and shaft with a proper machined and hardened drive:

 

 

FWD rotor in crossflow body:

 

 

Showing the shaft in the modified body, I've milled 16mm off the boss and counter-bored the remainder to accept the drive dog, I wanted to leave a locating register to make fitting the drive easier on the car:

 

 

Drive Dog/Oldham Coupling:

 

Drive Dog in situ on the pump showing the clearance for it to move radially in case of misalignment:

 

 

I didn't have any new timing gears and as every other part of the engine will be new it seemed stupid to fit worn chain sprockets so I started looking for replacements, then I tought about the extra load I was introducing on the timing chain by driving the oil and scavenge pump off the end of the cam so I decided to go Duplex! I got my local engineering firm to boreout and broachcut a keyway in it for me:

 

 

Then the engineers pointed out they didn't have a small enough chuck to hold the sprocket to reduce the diameter of the boss to clear my engines frontplate, they offered to make up a mandrel to hold it at my cost but instead I bought a lathe:

 

 

Dug out an old crankshaft which had been carefully run-in by Joe:

 

 

Cut the front off the crank and used it as a mandrel to hold the sprocket and turn it down:

 

 

Even Managed to turn a radius!:

 

 

Thats where its at the moment - I've made a pattern to get A new alloy sump cast as I wasn't entirely happy with the one pictured earlier. The cam sprocket is with the engineers doing the first stage of work to make it into a vernier adjustable sprocket so I dont have to bugger about with offset keys.

 

Anyway hope that wasnt all too boring.

 

Dave

[UltraWomble]

You are quite mad of course, but we love you and your updates.

[Inspector Morose]

Engineering porn - carry on.

[garethj]

Then the engineers pointed out they didn't have a small enough chuck to hold the sprocket to reduce the diameter of the boss to clear my engines frontplate, they offered to make up a mandrel to hold it at my cost but instead I bought a lathe:

 

This is the kind of genius that's missing from modern thinking, it wouldn't be out of place from Descartes, Nietzsche, Satre or Rousseau, providing they were trying to rebuild a Reliant engine.

[purplebargeken]

Cor! I understood bugger all but it all looks rather impressive. Carry on.

[Honey Badger]

Aye top class engineering porn, feel free to take as long as you like to update your thread if the updates are as good as this.

[Sigmund Fraud]

Amazing work ! Next step : removing the Rebel body and turning the project into a scaled-down replica of a Chevron B19 ?

[Minimad5]

Can only utter what has already been said.

Being a shite Engineer, i can understand and respect the work gone into this.

Also looks like you have a decent little lathe there, with a good bed length (unlike modern ones)

[Semi-C]

Rebel Rebel, I'm wella impressed.

 

Rebel Rebel, my pants have been messed.

 

Rebel Rebel, looks awesomely great

 

Top work, can't wait for updates

[Guest grunty]

Great reading this, found whle searching for kitten info. i have just started a rebuild on a 75 kitten so will find this thread very useful. Currently sorting suspension etc, new brakes all round, shot blasted components and POR 15 to protect it all. Will do chassis next to build a rolling chassis before i start the body. Was purchased as a pile of bits so the stripping stage has been bypassed

I also have a Rebel estate, GJR11L, JPB used to own it. Unfortunatly it was hit by a 7 tonner a while back so is sitting awaiting some body repairs.

Watching with interest

[coalnotdole]

Small progress - vernier cam sprocket is now partially machined:

 

Side view:

 

Need to sort out how I'm holding the drive key for the oilpump into the centre of the cam sprocket and then stick the sprocket and hub in the lathe and use my crude direct dividing attachment to drill some holes to bolt the two together as well as some dowel holes to set the differant degrees of adjustment.

 

 

Dave

[holbeck]

Interesting, not seen an Oldham coupling application in yonks.

 

I was a  marinisation engineer and we used them to drive the Jabsco pump from the camshaft on Lister Marine LPW4 engines

[Ben_O]

You've done a cracking job of this so far.

 

Ill have to start keeping an eye out for it, I live in Shanklin.

 

Keep it up!

 

Ben

[Matt]

(Epic bump, sorry!) but I've been looking at Reliants a lot and thoroughly enjoyed this build after bumping into it on your blog. The blue one you sold on here in 2013 looked fab. I want a Rebel now! Anyone know of a cheap-ish one for sale?

[xtriple]

Just read this start to finish.... I want, no NEED more! Come on, update.

[coalnotdole]

Well its been a while...

 

I'm embarrassed to say that the new engine hasn't really progressed at all since that last post in 2015! Its been sat on a rack next to the lathe collecting dust waiting for me to have time and the mojo to get properly stuck into it.

 

The car also sat in the yard gathering dust and only really getting started and moved when it was in the way. The 600cc engine which had been dropped in as a temporary measure when the car first went back on the road was really starting to show signs of its age (I think we put it in hoping it would get to the test station and back)

 

It had spun a couple of big ends after which I'd started pouring thicker and thicker oil into the sump and carried on driving it occasionally. It had also been heat seized on one occasion.

 

Fed up with it being to all intents and purposes undrivable outside of the yard, and having made no progress on the replacement engine I decided that it would be worth pulling the existing engine out over a weekend and overhauling it to at least make the car usable in the short term.

 

I already had a new old stock crankshaft for the early type engine and bought a set of +20 hepolite pistons so figured it should be a weekends work to get it out, stripped, bored and back together...

 

Please forgive the length of this post - in fairness it is sort of playing 3 and a half years of catchup!

 

 

Engine out:

 

 

 

 

looks like running that EP90 in the mix might have clagged things up a bit:

 

 

 

 

 

At this point I ran the block and liners down to my usual re-bore chap and hit a problem in that the bore was too small for his boring bar. So I had the option of taking the block to the mainland and paying £120+Vat for the machining and probably the same again for the ferry, or I could try shoving it in my elderly milling machine and try to bore it out myself...

 

 

Modified chinese boring bar off the lathe stuck in my small boring head:

 

 

 

The results weren't great as my mill is actually a horizontal machine with a vertical head bolted to it and therefore has no quill, and the knee elevation mechanism really needs stripping and overhauling.

Then I ordered a Sunnen type hone from india which when it finally arrived a month later cost me an extra £38 in import charges and appeared to have been made by a blind man using only a file and a hammer...

 

 

Lots of tedious honing and checking:

 

 

 

 

 

I also decked off the block without the liners fitted and then decked the liners off at the required height above the block:

 

 

 

Next up I stripped the head and decided to fit new valves and valve guides,

Valves I already had in stock and a quick phone call to Reliantpartsworld (who own what's left of reliant and its remaining stock after the final administration) promised me a set of valve guides in the post the following day.

 

So I went ahead and pressed out the old valve guides. About a month later I finally got round to fitting the new guides and realised that they were a looser fit on the valve stems than the original worn out guides from 1966!

 

After much dicking about I ended up ordering fancy solid Bronze guides intended for a Cosworth Pre-Crossflow of all things! These just required trimming to length slightly in the lathe and reaming after fitting.

 

 

Shiny:

 

 

 

 

 

I also recut the valve seats and did some basic porting of the head and manifolds:

 

 

 

As factory:

 

 

 

After basic port matching:

 

 

 

I also knocked up a stainless flange ready for the day when I replace the current restrictive downpipe:

 

 

 

Remachined the solex carburettor including fitting bushes for the throttle spindle as the body was worn (ones meant for an SU fitted with slight modification):

 

 

 

Sacked off the horrible asbestos carb insulator:

 

 

 

And made up a replacement in Delrin:

 

 

 

I made up some alloy tooling to remove the very worn camshaft bearings:

 

 

 

 

 

Then I decided while I had it apart I'd try and convert from the bypass oil filter system to a full flow filter. In a bypass setup the pump supplies oil straight to the bearings, it also feeds oil to the filter which then dumps itself straight into the sump. thus some of the oil is filtered as its circulated back to the sump but the oil going to the bearings isn't directly filtered.

 

Changing to Fullflow involves blocking off where the bypass filter would be and diverting the oil outside the block just after it comes from the pump, routing it through a filter and then back into the main oil gallery to lubricate the engine.

 

 

This union will block off the feed from the pump and also give me somewhere to pipe the oil back into the engine after the filter:

 

 

 

Showing how it cuts across and blocks the gallery:

 

 

 

And the other union diverting oil out from the pump:

 

 

 

Blank for the original oil filter location, Threaded hole is for the oil pressure switch as its usual position has been replaced with one of the hose fittings:

 

 

 

Starting to look like an engine again:

 

 

 

 

Car brought inside the workshop to drop the engine back in (feb 2018 i think?) :

 

 

 

Back in the car:

 

 

 

Now stupidly I had by this point treated the engine to new:

Crankshaft,

Main Bearings,

Big end bearings,

Little end bearings,

Pistons rings and gudgeon pins,

Camshaft bearings,

Valves,

Valve guides,

Timing chain and tensioner,

Distributor and oil pump driveshaft and gear,

Good used set of con rods,

 

But for some reason I had decided to reuse the oil pump despite having stripped it down and deciding it was worn. Running up the engine in the car I wasn't happy with the amount of oil getting to the top end of the engine so ended up doing what I should have done to begin with and getting a new pump sent over from one of the crates of Rebel spares at Joes house.

 

The early engines have a distributor that turns the opposite way to the later engines, this means the oil pump also rotates the other way so I had to do a bit of head scratching to work out if the new later type pump was going to actually pump oil in the right direction!

 

The Rebel has a welded in chassis brace just under the engine which means sump off is an engine out job, Having struggled to get the engine back in by myself I didn't want to take it out again so ended up undoing the mounts and lifting it enough that i could drop the sump 3 inches and try to reach in the gap and undo the pump by feel.

 

 

Assuming the position:

 

 

 

New and original pumps:

 

 

 

Back together with the new pump:

 

 

 

When the car was put back on the road after being sat in a garden since the early 1980's we shoved a bit of upholstery foam in the air filter as a "temporary" fix...

 

 

Several years later it looks like this:

 

 

 

Proper twin layer filter foam cut and glued up:

 

 

 

The car promptly rewarded me by pissing its nice new coolant out of the waterpump, Early type four bolt pulley pumps are no longer available and the quality of the new alternative pumps leaves a lot to be desired.

 

Luckily several years ago we bought some parts off an ex reliant worker who happened to be at the factory when the contents of the stores were going in the skip after reliant went into administration in the 1990s.

I got a couple of sets of impellers bearings and the carbon seals with the superior ceramic wear surface from his rescued stock.

When reliant was restarted they outsourced production of pumps to india where the sealing arrangement runs directly on the cast iron impeller which has a tendency to rust and damage the seal if stood for an extended time.

 

 

Old pump parts:

 

 

 

 

Rebuilt:

 

 

 

The Rebel 600 has a mechanical clutch linkage which docent lend itself to spirited driving as the engine moves as torque builds in the drivetrain and thus changes the relationship between gearbox and clutch pedal moving the bite point.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've snapped and rewelded the engine torque/stabiliser bar which is supposed to counteract this.

 

So i've bought these:

 

 

 

And made up this:

 

 

 

Which with some modification to the pedal will mount the master cylinder here, this is basically a mirror image of how the hydraulic brakes are fitted on the other side of the chassis member:

 

 

 

I haven't got round to welding the bracket on yet....

 

Dave

[coalnotdole]

And proof that it does at least run now! :

 

 

Its actually a bit gutless at mid range revs which I'm putting down to the limitations of the solex downdraught. I've just finished making a modified manifold to suit a weber carb intended for a fiat which should hopefully give it a bit more poke..

 

Dave

[Skizzer]

Modified chinese boring bar off the lathe stuck in my small boring head

 

This is a lot more interesting than the stuff that’s stuck in my own small boring head.

[Minimad5]

Spot on work sir.

Keep the updates coming- Please !

[paulplom]

Brilliant. Keep it up.