The first one

08/31/08

The first one..

Recently unearthed from a 10 year storage, the 1984 Motorshow car and also chassis number 000001, B731AOA is now back on the road!

The one-off Porsche Pearl paintwork is virtually unmarked, but when the car arrived at ss1turbo.com towers, there were a few points to address - the main one being a siezed engine. A strange mixture of oils and gentle persuasion managed to free it off, and i just couldn't resist the temptation to pop a set of new plugs in to see if it would run. To my amazement, it actually fired on 10 year old petrol!

The first job was replacement of the 24 year old cam belt (which left half of its teeth behind), oil and water, rapidly followed by a silted radiator needing some cleaning out.

I'd had a good look around the car prior to purchase, so thought my chances of an MoT were fair to good - now it actually ran! Its first miles in over 10 years were to the station, where it promptly passed its first one in 11 years! Some quick running around to get the tax and insurance sorted, and it was driven to the RSSOC National Sporting Weekend in August 2008. The car was also driven to the Stoneleigh Park Country Festival the following weekend for the RSSOC stand.

(Picture courtesy of Dave Poole of www.sporting-reliants.com)

What have i found out so far? Well, there are some differences between this and later production cars. The ones i've discovered so far include:

	The wings are fibreglass, not the Dunlop RRIM "rubber" ones
	The wiring loom will be interesting - every wire is black with individual wire numbers
	The headlamps are flush to the nose when retracted and the headlamp panel is different
	The carpet is actually stitched to match the shape of the floor, not moulded; also the inner kick plates are carpeted rather than the "production" panels.
	There's no rear anti-roll bar fitted! The holes are in the chassis and trailing arms, but its never been fitted..

It seems that the 1300 engine is in fine fettle - no smoke, no rattles and is a very sweet unit indeed. The 24 year old Goodyear HR60 tyres have now been replaced as they had suffered from age and started to delaminate! At least it feels better round corners and the wheel wobble from the "D" shaped tyres has now gone..

The history supplied with the car shows that it was a Reliant car for the first 18 months, before being sold to the previous owner. Total mileage stands at just under 26,000 miles. A body coloured hardtop was added later on and fits very well. The raft of bills also includes 2 clutch cables fitted in quick succession.

The list of outstanding jobs continues to grow - the petrol tank appears to be full of a petrol/rust soup (3 fuel filters used so far), so i'll have to do something quickly about that. The front suspension has developed an annoying squeak - all the wishbones are fine, so it appears to be a dry bush which needs a little attention. The engine mounts also need replacement as they are cracked and soggy - a gracious start from standstill is not that easy at the moment!

This site was last updated Sunday, 31 August 2008 14:22:22 +0100 Reliant Sabre Scimitar SST SS1 1300 1400 1600 1800Ti Turbo injection intercooler RSSOC