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1985 Reliant SS1 rebuild/upgrade
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Apr 11, 2010 | 06:57 PM
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pauluspaolo
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To bring everyhing up to date the most recent thing(s) I've done to the car have been to fit a roll-over bar & fit a pair of MX5 seats To make more room in the car I removed the seats. The bar went in the car no problem & using some pointers I'd printed off the Scimweb forum (a mine of information) I started the job! The first mistake I made was that I didn't mark where the feet of the bar went when the carpet was in place. So once I'd fitted & bolted the bar in place without the carpet in the car I realised that it'd all have to come out again so that I could refit/mark/cut the carpet!! Did I feel a numpty? Yes I did
!
On some (all?) of the galvanised SS1's there are captive nuts, for the roll bar feet bolts, built into the chassis. As mine is a non-galvanised car I wasn't sure if these captive nuts would be present or not. It turns out that they aren't fitted to my car so I had to drill some 10mm holes & make a quick trip to Screwfix (fortunately there's a branch close to my house) to buy some bolts (& nyloc nuts) suitable for the job. Eventually I got the bar bolted in place & it feels solid. I'm told that welding it in position would be better but I'm not sure how I'd do this given that there's a layer of glass fibre between the rollover bar feet & the actual chassis & I'm not taking the car to bits any more than it is already! The bar is also held in place by three M8 bolts at the B-post so it’s held in position by 12 bolts (6 per side) in total. It feels totally solid & should increase the strength/rigidity of the car quite a bit I think. I have been told that the strength of the actual bar can be increased by welding a diagonal bar across it but I’m not sure this is really necessary.
Anyway here are a few pictures of the job – the last one shows the finished installation.
The first pic shows the roll bar foot & the three M10 bolts that hold it in position. I’ve used thick washers/spreader plates behind to secure them. Access was a complete pig & I had to remove the rear shock absorbers to give me more room – even then the rear suspension arms got in the way & I ended up using just about every extension I had in my socket set to reach the nuts!!
This pic shows the roll bar in position - all holes drilled & partly bolted in. I then realised that it'd have to come out again so that I could fit/mark/cut the carpet.
This photo shows the clearance between the roll bar & inside of the hard top (it also shows that my hard top needs retrimming - yet another job). Clearance with the hard top fitted is fine, so it should be ok with the soft top fitted, but I'll just have to wait & see. The soft top's pretty worn out & could really do with replacing so I'll probably end up using the car with the hard top fitted most of the time.
And here we have the finished installation - carpet fitted & cut, roll bar in position & all bolts tightened up. I like the way it looks & it feels proper, & I mean PROPER, solid & I'm chuffed with it. I'm not sure I'd want to do the job again anytime soon though!!
Opinions welcome as always.
I also wanted to fit a pair of MX5 seats I'd got off Retro-Rides & I recently spent a day hack sawing, drilling, tapping, sweating, straining & swearing as I adapted the Reliant seat runners to fit them - the Reliant seat runners have the seat belt mounting points built into them so it best to use them if I could! My idea being to make some adaptor plates that I could bolt to the MX5 seat bases using the M8 holes already tapped into them. I'd then bolt the Reliant runners onto the plates into which I’d tapped another M8 hole. I didn't take any photo's of the adaptors I'm afraid (sorry about that) but they seem to do the job well enough. They were fiddly & time consuming to make - the worst part being hack sawing through the 10mm plate! Both seats feel very secure & still move forwards & backwards (though the drivers side seat is a little reluctantl to move). The seats themselves are much comfier & more supportive than the originals (which were flat, unsupportive & knackered) but they also felt overstuffed, almost as if you were sitting on top of them rather than in them if that makes any sense? So I removed the seats & then the seat covers & attacked the seat foam with an electric carving knife (as you do!) in order to try & reduce the height of the seat cushion. Despite being a bit drastic it seems to have worked well enough & both seats (the drivers side especially) feel much more “buckety” whilst still being comfortable & supportive. The main problem is that the seat bases are a bit deeper than the original Reliant ones so they sit a bit higher, This isn’t really a problem for me & Gillian as we’re both 5’7”ish but it probably will be a problem for anyone much taller than us - having said that my 5'10" friend can get comfortable in the car so maybe it isn't a problem at all!? Even so I can see me getting the seat rails lowered at some stage in the future which means doing a bit of cutting & welding & then getting the floor re-fibreglassed! It’s not a huge job (apparently), & plenty of people who've fitted aftermarket seats have already done it, but it’s not really something I want to start right now.
So that's the interior more or less sorted, next on the agenda is to try & get the engine running. I need to pull it out again so that I can fit a new clutch release bearing - I should have fitted one when the engine was out but, like a complete plonker, I forgot! The lack of a sump is still a major problem but I’m hoping that my friend will get it sorted soon! Then I'm probably going to have to leave the car for a bit until I can get the funds together for a fuel pump, carb(s)/manifold, megajolt ecu, starter motor, alternator mount & alternator, exhaust etc etc etc!
I'm getting married at the end of July
, and then I’m off on honeymoon for 2 weeks
, so it looks as if life will get in the way of the project for a while.
Anyway here are a couple of not very good pics of the seats installed.
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