1981 Reliant Kitten - Chassis paint 01-may

[Blown_Imp]

Sweeeeeeeet! Cant wiat to see this one together, the southern convoy to retro cars next year is going to be pretty serious

The chassis looks great, did you get that welding sorted we were talking about? How tall is this engine compared to the original one? Ive heard that twin cam heads can make an engine quite tall.

J

[Mr K]

Cheers, yup i layed into the iffy looking bit, and despite its looks it was rather well stuck! oh well, atleast i know now!

hopefully there will be 2 kittens at CARS, but there is a hell of a lot to do on this one!!! (note lack of seats and wheels)

the 8v fire is about 3" taller than the stock reliant one due to being CIH, the twink fire is indeed taller again, also by about 2" or so, however it weighs in at 15kg more than the stock all alloy rleiant unit, as well as being 15mm shorter! I'm hopeing to get it as low in the chassis as possible, it should sit atleast where the old engine did, but sump will need some modding, and 'wings' adding as it looks Kakka and is designed for a front wheel drive setup with the engine lent over 12 degrees.

Nick

[Deleted]

Looking good bud.

[TerraRoot]

do it! interceptor kitten! lolol!!1

[froggy]

i can see what your up to now nick the bug trailing arm idea is not the best for you as its setup for roll stiffness on the bug where a normal parralel 4link and panhard rod is better for the kitten. ive set mine at 4"ride height ,any lower and the standard bone pickups need moving to move the roll centre above ground. got some trailing arm mounts spare if you want some

[Mr K]

Definatly interested in the arms mate, as for parrallel arms i am toying with the idea of a 2nd set up top arm mounts, so i could flick between the bug setup, and a parrallel setup by simply undoing two bolts?

Nick

[Mr K]

well, i picked up my head from ebay:

Cam box - shame it doesnt look like a real twink...



lifters and the like... a tad grubby! will scrub them up and see what they are like... everything else looks to be in good nick.


16 valves and caps, and 32 springs (doulbe valve springs as standard)


The head its self, note that it is freshly skimmed:


and the guy was nice engough to throw in the top half of the inlet an throttle body, although the plans for fueling are rather un decided:


that lot was £16.81 from ebay, not bad considering there is a receipt for £15 for the head skim! i still need a few bits, but most of it is generic Fiat FIRE, and not 1.2 16v specific, so give me a shout if you have anything!

and the whole lot plonked together:



its a pretty tall engine all in, although its a very short engine which makes it look taller than it is, but i have lots of room, although there is aleast an inch to come out of the sump...

i also got around to making this:





a wooden dolly to allow me to trundle my chassis around the garage, casters from ebay, and a rather massive pallet stolen from some builders... should be able to build the susspension, brakes, engine + box and axle onto the chassis whilest its still on there.

More soon...

Nick

[Ratdat]

How about going for parrallel links and a watts linkage instead of a panhard rod. it's a wee bit more complicated but works really well and is especially good if you have limited clearance between tyre and arch. you can pull a watts setup off a Rover SD1.

[trg1984]

cant wait to see this finished.

[Blown_Imp]

very nice indeed, i like this axle set up -

www.not2fast.com/chassis/mumford.shtml

Pretty complex but seems to do the job jolly well

J

[Mr K]

OK! i picked up my gearbox on Saturday night, from a Suzuki SJ 1.3 jeep... its a nice little 5 speed all alloy box and doesn't weigh too much more than the reliant one, however it is abit longer.

i didn't really get to work on it Saturday, however on Sunday i cracked on and got lots done, firstly i measured the bell housing and engine bolt spacings and popped them into cad:



the green ones are the engine, the red ones the gearbox, only 4 12mm holes on the engine, and 5 on the gearbox, but one clashed so cant be used. (the two little ones at the bottom are for a cover plate on the bell housing)

it was a royal pain to measure the bell housing without any kind of datum to start with, so i gaffer taped a couple of steel rules to it at bang on 90degrees... and from a 1:1 plot it fits exactly to size with!

next i knocked up the adapter out of ply, and sank the bolts for the engine down into the plate, as they would somewhat obstruct the bell housing.







i stupidly for got that i needed to get a socket onto the bolts so when i set them down in i made them a snug fit.... so there are only 2 bolts, both finger tight in that pic, but it lines up and the spigot is damn central when look down the middle of the block.

next i need to know how this the adapter needs to be, and how big the hole for the fly wheel needs to be, as well as where the starter motors going - however I'm having trouble finding out how big the fly wheel is ( i don't have one yet) and what other fiat FIRE flywheels fit, and my source of knowledge all things fire, Clubfirepower.com has let me down abit here, with one reply saying simply: 'the stud spacings differ across the fire range.'

so sick of measuring stuff and carpentry i set to cleaning up some suspension bits, the front uprights looked kinda like this, but not so blurry in real life.



and it all now looks like:



the wheel bearings are all in really good nick, so can be saved, however I'm after some break back plates to fit a mini with drums on the front.

i also rebuild and painted the steering rack:



and thats is all... next up is cutting up the chassis, and allot of head scratching when i attempt to 'mount it'.

[Mr K]

no updates for a long time, but heres a quickie to let you kno what ive been upto!

i have cut about 10" from the main tube across my chasis so i can do this:



sit my engine on it, and an old spare foot well. (sorry about the pic, fook knows why the camera did that)

since then i have also made up all of the bits for the drives side engine mount, just not welded them together yet due to being out of gas.

having sat the head on and realised just how close to my feet it all is i have no option but down draught carbs... and to keep the inlet simple that sgonna be IDFs or DCNFs, but by the time i have done all that i may as well have fitted some bike TBs and megajizz, had i not?

more progress and pics to come sunday i hope.

Nick

[PhoenixC]

Looking good there.

Any joy with a flywheel yet?

[Mr K]

not yet, i havent pulled my finger out and started properly looking though, however, payday is any day now, and i have asked the guy i got my bottom end from to cinfirm it is from an 02reg mk2 sporting (before i buy all the wrong bits!)

i should have the adapter plate finished by the end of next month, and the engine all mounted up.

fingers crossed i will also have the rear axle all mounted and the chassis in top coat hammerite, maybe with brake lines and fuel lines......... thats the aim anyway.

Nick

[Mr K]

I tidied the garage abit.... then made some boxs and welded them to the chassis, drilled some holes, cut this and that, welded it together, and ended up with some engine mounts:



the mounts are not quite finished - some radiused edges and a brace to triangulate the tube to the plate still to go!



Also made up some little tangs to hold the bottom of the rad - the top will be realy solidly mounted, so the bottom is not to critical - so long as it cant move. the rad will stand up abit more once there a frame to hold the body up...
The rad its self is a all alloy / plastic mk1 fiesta rad (!?) and weighs nowt, and cost all of £5 off egay!



the pics curse word but the argon / CO2 mix made the welds penetrate miles into the 1/4" plate/tube combo, they are certainly strong enough!

Sorry about the pics!!

Nick

[Mr K]

Well, I have been plugging away at it - heres the progress.

with the main tube across the chassis now useless (about 8" cut from the middle of it so the gearbox could fit) I turned my attention to fitting a new cross memeber, this was also to mount the gearbox on.

bassically I marked it all up, cut squares out of it all, measured and checked it was where I wanted it, then sat it on the concrete and welded it all up working at oposites to help keep it flat.










note that mount is made from 6mm steel plate, all worked by hand with a pillar drill, files, and a hack saw....

also you can see where I had to trim back the seat mounting plates and welded the ends back on - managed some near little welds there.

also bought a new dashboard, (its abit special) and dug out some guages to rebuild:



be sure to tune in soon for some rear susspension and maybe a rebuild guage or two.

Nick

[street]

Real progress bieng made here, well done!
Loving your approach to the project, keep plugging away at it, its going to be special when its finished!

[Seth]

Good to see you making progress on this I'd be quite amused if you put your last update up on a hot rod board and get them to work out what you were building

If you fancy some curved glass in those guages I can probably source some for you.

[Mr K]

seth said:

Good to see you making progress on this I'd be quite amused if you put your last update up on a hot rod board and get them to work out what you were building

If you fancy some curved glass in those guages I can probably source some for you.

curved glass... like domed ? I'm certainly interested! feel free to post it up where ever you like.... but i dout they will guess its a reliant kitten with a fiat engine, suzuki box, and vauxhall axle (more about the axle soon - thanks ade!)

[errey]

Its looking well good dude! the chassis tube looks solid. I'm glad u got around the lack of gearbox space prob! I will have 2 come and have a butchers in the flesh!