Phr34kr's 1975 Reliant Scimitar Se5a

[phr34kr]

More photos to come soon.

This is my 1975 reliant scimitar se5a, 3ltr ford Essex in in with the following modifications:

Extractors, ported and polished and over sized valves.

Hopefully getting it running tomorrow, one of the rockers pulled a stud so had to get a helicoil (lost motivation for about a year) and a few weekends ago i finally got it in only to discover the hole with the thread in it went all the way through into the inlet manifold well im hoping some stud fix will suffice to seal the thread. so just have to put that on and do all the valve clearances then it should be running (even though the water pump leaks like a sieve). Next im going to full the body off the chassis and store in on some custom saw horses im going to make up.

This build is going to be quite long as i cant fit the car in the garage and am still in high school so the funding is completely dependent on how much my parents are willing to pay towards it.

[phr34kr]

Okay put the rockers back in and did the clearances on the valves cold today. Got given a starter motor as well

Will do the clearances at running temp sometime soon.

[phr34kr]

More photos

The engine bay

Once i get the body off im definitely rewiring and putting in a new fuse box with blade fuses

And a pic of the interior

Also found some 1 gauge welding cable in my garage today (about 7 meters long) going to use it to relocate my battery to the boot overkill i know but i already have it and makes for a cheap setup.

[phr34kr]

Got it running finally!

The thread lock didn't seal the stud well and oil was getting into the inlet manifold

Don't know how im going to fix it? any ideas?

It ran well going on all six now but will need new waterpump and exhaust gaskets.

[phr34kr]

Okay just a little update, Started pulling the interior out of the car. I have both front seats removed and one rear one (will attempt the other tomorrow after giving the WD40 some time to work on the screws holding it in) Hopefully in two weeks time it will be ready for the body to come off but there are always stupid little things that dont go as planned so may take a little longer.

[phr34kr]

Really annoyed at these brackets the bolts in them are snapping off even after soaking them in WD and leaving them over night. going to give up and move on.

[phr34kr]

Okay spent quite a few hours working on it today, interior is now pretty empty there are a few more trim panels i would like to remove but they are a bit tricky, spent most of today trying to take off the tow bar which is turning out to be a nightmare, it is bolted through the body and to the chassis so therefore must be removed so i can get the body off. Problem is that to get to the bolts holding it on i must take out the fuel tank, but of course everything has been in place so long that it doesn't want to budge, so to gain more access i also need to take off the bumper which is a pain. So in short its just goign to take alot of pissing about to do a few simple things that were designed very poorly.

[phr34kr]

Got the tow bar and rear bumper off today was fairly easy once i found a 19mm spanner, pics to come of stripped out interior.

[phr34kr]

was going to take decent pictures today but thought i might as well drain out the fuel tank first of the few liters of petrol it had in it (or so i thought). turns out there was a hell of a lot of petrol in it 30+ liters so yea got pissed of at that and gave up and i/ the car/ the driveway now reek of petrol

[phr34kr]

okay so a pic of the empty (ish) interior.

Wanted to take the center console out as well but will have to loosen off the hand brake to do that. don't want to remove the dash yet as it is in good condition as far as scimitar dash's go. also my roof lining is mint as so dont want to touch that either (and hopefully shouldn't have to)

[phr34kr]

Just a little update, Haven t done anything to the car recently cause of lack of time etc but i managed to get hold of a new replacement windscreen for it, got it for half of its value so im really happy with that. The guy who i got the windscreen of is involved in the scimitar club and new a few things about my car. Apparently it has already been fixed up twice already but the last owner didn't take very good care of it. Also he was able to comfirm that it has a rebuilt motor gearbox and diff in it.

[phr34kr]

Quite a bit done today was going to attempt to take the body off the chassis but then decided i really need ed to take out most of the glass and doors off.

did all this then realized that i needed to remove the bear lever to be able to slide the body backwards and "unhook" it from the chassis, with the standard gearbox this would have been easy but at some stage someone has put a completely different gearbox in it (no idea of type yet) as the standard one has linkages to shift and this ones gear lever just goes straight into the box. so i saw the 3 bolts on the top of the box around the gear lever and un did them semi separating it wriggled it around decided that it wasnt goign to come out this way and that id probably fucked it up. out the bolts back in and yep cant select any gears any more, no idea really how serious this is but im sure i will find out soon enough .

anyway as i cant remove the gear lever to be able to slide the body backwards im going to drop the gearbox out, but to do that and not get it jammed in the chassis i first have to take the engine out and then pull the gearbox out through the engine bay . Ill try do this tomorow. after all of this im really wanting to put annother engine in although im not sure about how hard it will be to get the car re vin'd with a different engine, will i be able to get a cert? if anyone could help enlighten me on this subject it would be great. well more pics,

[phr34kr]

took engine out yeterday, removed driveshaft, gearbox and body from chassis today will upload pics soon.

Also i took some pictures of the gearbox, hopefully someone on here will know what it is. and what it is out of.

engine out

lots of room for a new engine im liking the idea of a 1jz gte will be the go i think if i can get it certed and re vined

engine gearbox and driveshaft out

anyone have any idea what sort of box this is and what its out of?

lifting the body off next time i will use two decent engine hoists not the good one and the one i made for $13 (was dodgy as had such i high center of gravity almost fell over )

started to come off and then it got stuck.... manual said it would come off with the fuel tank in but someones made some modifications so out with the tank

tank was in pretty good nick has been opend up at some stage and had a plate welded back in the top a common issue as they traped water between them and the foam against the body and rusted out on top.

FREE!

and with a little bit of struggling we managed to get the body out the side and roll it backwards.

and now resting on stands, im very pleased it survived it ended up very high in the air at one point.

now i have the body off its time to do the rust repairs on the chassis (the joys of having a fiberglass bodied car)

it looks like just the outermost rail of one of the out riggers needs to be replaced atm wich is very easy just sheet steel bent in to a C shape

[phr34kr]

Yay now have a bare chassis

took out the diff...

that was easy but iv spent the last few days trying to separate the steering ball joints from the arm things, used lots of different hammers, hit form both directions etc etc for hours and they wouldn't separate so i had a look in the garage to see that sort of pullers etc i had and i found this

Its so amazingly good for this job took about 30 seconds a side, just wound it up and they popped out

so once i had the rack out i then took both suspension/hub/brake units off each side

3 pot brakes

going to go buy two plastic boxes tomorrow so i can separate each side and fully strip them down ready for blasting and repainting.

[phr34kr]

Not much progress lately been and joined the scimitar club. Met someone who created a 3.8L fuel injected Essex v6, decided i am definitely going down the 3.0 holden ecotec v6 route, also figured out how to lower the car very nicely keeping all the steering geometry in check. Brought a gearbox today its some sort of 5spd supra box, has been striped down and is in good condition. A few crappy cellphone pics.

[phr34kr]

went and picked up another body from Opitiki on Saturday might use this one as its pretty straight, no major cracks in the fiberglass or anything.

Also been offered a supercharger from a guy in the club at a good price its for a 3.8 Holden v6 and im definitely going down the 3.8 Holden V6 route now so have to decide whether or not to buy it.

discussion

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19002&start=20

[phr34kr]

So i decided that the supercharger was a very good idea and brought it,

and also picked up a little intercooler it will be fine for my situation just have to decide where i want to mount it.

[phr34kr]

After i got the second body into its new home in the backyard i started completely striping it out, thinking that i was going to use it and that i would redo everything so that it was perfect. However once i reached the final stages and was removing the head lining i found that the A-pillar has rust in it. Reliant scimitars go have fiberglass bodies but they also have steel in places and water causes it to rust and the only way you know its bad it when it splits the glass so that its visible. I would not be happy just covering it up (you wouldn't be able to see it as its not visible from the outside and the trim covers it inside) so would mean i would have a huge task to undertake cutting the fiberglass, removing the steel, fitting new steel and then fiber glassing it back up, something I don't want to do. So the first body will be used and the second one will be kept as a future race car project.

Anyway today i organized one half of the front suspension so that it can be blasted and then painted. I have decided to do one half at a time so that i have the other side to copy and make re assembly easy.

I became a member of the scimitar club a while ago and have met a number of people with lots of usefull information, one person in the club has lowered the car to the specified 'factory specs' (they left the factory a few inches higher than what is stated) and it looks very good, especially because it uses the same shocks and springs, just somethings are flipped upside down and left to right but more on that after i get the assemblies cleaned up.

I also have a second pair of doors from the second body i brought that are in far better condition than the first and are also manual winding so no dodgy electrics to hassle me with.

I considered shaving the chrome handles and running solex locks but i have decided on a far better way and will keep the chrome handles for looks while running key-less entry for security, not that i plan on leaving it anywhere that it might be nicked but just for peace of mind i would like it to be a bit more difficult than a screwdriver in the keyhole.

Also i have found out that i can run Peugeot 505 front ventilated disks on the front using the same mounting and caliper, as all it needs is a spacer made for it as it is a 2 piece casing.

[phr34kr]

Okay so a couple of months ago through the club i received an email about a project that was for sale, considered finding out more at the time but for some reason i didn't. Anyway the other day i received another email saying the project was going to go up on trade me for $1 reserve so i rang the guy and found out the project was a very reasonable price so went and checked it out on Friday said id take it then and there and picked it up yesterday.

Its a SE5a just like the other 2 but the body was damaged in storage while the guy was cleaning up the chassis so he cut it down to make it into a convertible

Engine has oversize pistons and just recently had the heads off and checked etc, also has electronic ignition which is good as it would be one of the first things id do to it.

as you can see the chassis is very clean, and colourful

It has the 4 speed with electronic overdrive as well as a Nardi steering wheel

The original rims are also in very good condition.

Plans;

As the rego on this is on hold unlike the other one which is dead i will be using this chassis/drive-train/engine with the green body and interior.

The plan is to get a road legal scimitar for as little money as possible (so sticking with the NA essex for now)

I shouldn't have to buy too many new parts as buy the looks of it out of the two cars i at least have one good set of everything.

New things i am definitely going to buy;

Wiring, i could attempt to just wire the cars with existing wiring but i don't want to risk it, for the money i would spend doing it myself it would be stupid to leave the dodgy wiring it has now in it.

Radiator the radiators were crap form new so i'm on the look out for something out of a later model car to use.

Window seals these could become potentially very expensive but i know someone who my old man sold a set to years ago very cheap that i might be able to buy back as he hasn't used them yet.

Ill have to do something about the paint on the green car but i don't want to spend huge money on it and will do most if not all of it at home, im not aiming for an excellent finish as being a fiber glass car it will crack in a few years no mater how well you paint it.

There will be more things to add to the list but those are the main things im thinking about right now

[phr34kr]

Managed to get a few mates around yesterday to move the bodies around, its amazing how many people are busy when you mention moving car bodies

I'm going to use the original scimitars body with the new chopped up scimitars chassis + drive train and i will keep the separate bare body i brought awhile ago for a future project.

The green body needs sanding back and painting as well as a few fiberglass repairs so it needed to be moved under cover, the other body and the original chassis in need a a few minor rust repairs was being stored in the shelter station so i moved these out and am storing the spare body on the old chassis to help straighten out the body (it had been sitting on the ground before i brought it and had a slight bow to it)

Once these were out i moved the green body in and supported up off the ground i will be able to slowly work on sanding it back and repairing it without having to worry about weather.

I have quite a number of sheets of plywood to lay down as a floor to keep it tidy and clean inside. The majority of work on this should start towards the end of the year after i have finished my exams.