I am recording the work I do to restore the Jeffrey and prepare it for racing. New items are added at the top of the page so if you want to read the whole story go to the bottom of the page and start reading!
16/3/2020 I've spent a lot of time since my last post working on the design and building of a nose cone for the car. I have used measurements taken from the nose cone lent to me by Bob Diggory, an image of a completed car from a period Jeffrey brochure and measurements from my chassis to make a simple buck.
29/3/2020 Day 5 of the Corona virus lock down and I'm using some of the time to get this blog page updated. There has been a long gap since my last post while waiting for Jo White to start work on the chassis modifications and getting the chassis back in February, since when I have been replacing a couple of rusty chassis tubes and getting some paint on. Jo has done a huge amount of work to bring the chassis up to a raceable standard. The main items he has attended to are as follows;
An update on the nosecone - via the Historic 750 Drivers Forum I made contact with Bob Diggory who is also rebuilding a Jeffrey and has the original aluminium nosecone for the car. Bob very kindly allowed me to borrow the cone over the winter and I have taken the key measurements from it that will allow me to make a reasonable copy in due course.
15/6/2019 In parallel with the chassis mods I have been designing a nosecone that I will make in glassfibre. I found a very good set of tutorial videos on you tube posted by Easy Composites. I have worked out the lines of a nose cone that is loosly based on the one in the Jeffrey brochure. I'll use these to make a plug mould and then laminate up a nosecone from it. I'll keep the plug mould in case I ever need to make another.
15/6/2019 The 'bonnet' that I want to fit has necessitated some further modifications to the chassis. I need the top rails that run from immediately behind the nosecone to the 'dashboard' frame on which the lower edges of the bonnet will sit to be straight, but previous modifcations by earlier owners of the car have resulted in the rails being kinked in both plan and elevation, and not very well aligned and out of plumb. I have therefore cut them out and replaced them with straight bars. This has resulted in some of the connecting chassis tubes now not being long enough to weld to the new rails and/or not being aligned correctly so they have had to be variously modified or replaced. I'll put some photos in the chassis gallery.
11/6/2019 Have been sourcing assistance with the making of a new ROPS. This is going to involve a bit of waiting for a slot in the fabrication shop so I have been giving some thought to modifications of the front end of the chassis. I have decided that I would like to return the car to something similar to that shown in the factory brochure for the Jeffrey MkIIIB which you can see here. Scaling on the photo indicates that the height of the 'bonnet' is about 100mm - probably 4" given the imperial dimensions apparent in the rest of the chassis. Having cut out the chassis cross member over the driver's thighs I can make the replacement a structural member with a shape to suit the rear edge of the bonnet. The brochure photgraph suggests that the radius to which the longitudinal edge of the bonnet is curved is also 4". Then I will also need to make a nose cone for the car. The shape of this is fairly well illustrated by the images in the brochure, though I will have to work out some suitable overall dimensions. I have been looking at some Youtube videos of a Jeffrey IIIB restoration posted by 'Doug's Shed' - search in Youtube and you will find them. Doug's car appears to have an aluminium nose cone of a different shape.
28/5/19 I've been working for a few days on the seat for the racer. The car came with a fibreglass seat but this was not mounted in the car. I have made a lightweight plywood frame for the seat that fits in the chassis and lets me try out various positions for the shell. I have also cut out an unnecessary bit of shaping on the right side of the seat that cuts into the drivers space and was probably introduced to fit around the frame of whatever car it was previously used on. Since I am fairly broad in the beam any extra width I can get is useful. Once I am happy with the position of the seat I'll fibreglass in a couple of lateral bars that can be used to mount it to the chassis.
13/5/19 Been thinking about what order to do the chassis mods in. I need to replace the ROPS because the existing bar doesn't meet current regs, have a weld in the middle. To design a new ROPS I need to know what my seating position will be since this will fix the height and longitudinal location of the top of my head. At the same time I want to increase the height of the space that my legs have to fit through whan I get into the car - at present I need knees that fold forward to get in! I'm therefore planning to cut out the cross member that the steering column bolts to and replace it about 75mm higher. See photo . I want to be comfortable and not lying too flat. There is plenty of length in the driver's space to allow that but I'd rather be sitting up a bit, even if this increases drag. I'll make an adjustable seat buck and use this to find the best seating position.
9/5/19 Copy of '750 Racer' arrived. A good read and a lot of useful information. Also a bit of background on Jeffrey and the MkIII, which was the basis of Dick Harvey's first venture into building his own cars.
5/5/19 Went to the 750MC meeting at Mallory Park. This was my first meeting since deciding to get involved. Met several of the drivers and talked to scrutineer Alan Dorrell and elegibility man Ron Welsh. Ron suggested sending him details of my car ASAP. Ron also recommended the book '750 Racer' by Peter Herbert and Dick Harvey for the section on 'Making the Robin Fly'. H750F only had one race, the 2nd to last of the day, which was marred by Mike Harvey having a heavy contact with the barrier on Gerard's Bend after swerving to avoid a spinning car. Mike was taken to hospital but apart from some brusing was not too badly hurt. Then after the race was restarted it was almost immediately stopped again when a spectator collopsed and the remaining ambulance was used to take them to hospital, leaving the track without ambulance cover. After a lengthy delay the race was restated for the 2nd time and run through to the end.
4/5/19 Went to the Donington Historic meeting. Parked with the RSSOC in the infiekld. Lots of good racing and bought two books with a Reliant theme, one Don Pither's book on the three wheelers, the other by Elvis Payne about the Scimitar.
April 2019 I spent most of my spare time during April clearing and organising my workshop.
24/3/19 - Practical Classics show at the NEC. Talked to Powersparks and bought a coil, distributor and set of HT leads on the recommendation of Dave Depper.
15/3/19 - bought some industrial grade racking for the storage unit. Collected it from Barnsley using the car trailer behind my Discovery TD5.
12/3/19 - Bought a car trailer on ebay - £600. A twin axle job. A bit battered but will do the job after a bit of renovation. It's big enough to carry a normal sized car so will be useful for the collection in general, though it's bigger than it needs to be for the racing car.
5/3/2019 - I had a long phone call with Dave Depper about tuning Reliant engines. Gathered a lot of good information.
4/3/2019 - took a lease on a storage unit so that I could clear out my home garage/workshop ready for some serious action on the Jeffrey.
22/2/2019 - Went to Race Retro exhibition at Stoneleigh Park. Bought three books on the subject of tuning and preparing racing cars. These are David Vizard's How to Build Horsepower (CarTech), How to Build, Modify and Power Tune Cylinder Heads (SpeedPro Series and Sports Car & Kit Car Suspension, Brakes High Performance Manual (SpeedPro Series). All worthwhile I think. I also signed up for a year to Historic Racing & Technology magazine (Kimberley Media Group) on the basis of some interesting reading on early Lotus cars and other articles relevant to the H750F.
6/2/2019 Sent off cheque for £135 for control camshaft.
5/2/2019 Downloaded 2019 Motorsport UK regulations.
1/2/19 - Alternator wiring insulation was very hard and cracked – needed replacement. Terminals in the alternator connector can be released by inserting a slim blade into the cutout that exists on the face of the plug that goes into the alternator. According to a web search the Rialto alternator is a Lucas 18ACR 45 amp. Used search term 'crimp terminals for lucas alternator' and found replacement kits for the plug.
30/1/2019 Thread into gearbox casing for engine mounts is 3/8” UNF 5/8” long.
29/1/2019 Got 4 as my race number in response to list of available numbers from Lyndon. Since last entry most of the work I have done has been to design a prony brake dynamometer. See Youtube for examples. I want to see how much power the standard engine has and then progressively test it as I prepare it for racing.
12/1/19 - Went to the AutoSport show at the NEC
11/1/19 the work done last week was getting the engine running in the chassis. All the wiring for the ignition had to be recreated because most of it was left behind on the body. The ignition system had been recently overhauled by the previous owner, including an Accuspark electronic ignition system. There is an issue with the distributor cap, which does nor register with the distributor body and so can twist, thus affecting the ignition timing. This can be sorted. Got the engine running – set up a ballast resistor system using a new resistor that I had bought for the Scimitar but not yet fitted. Engine ran much better once the vacuum advance was reconnected.
29/12/18 The drivers seat front outer bracket has two bolts into captive nuts in the chassis rail. There is one bolt in each footwell going through the toe board into captive nuts in the rising chassis members. The brake pipe unions near the master cylinder (2 pipes) need to be separated. Detach speedo, throttle and choke cables and any wires that go between the engine/chassis and the body. Detach the handbrake cables. Loosen the petrol filler pipe. Then the body can be lifted away from the chassis.
28/12/18 split the two ball joints and removed the ‘track rod’ and then removed the steering box (three bolts into captive nuts, two easy to get to, one less so. Tried lift the front of the body – moved about 5mm but then was lifting the whole front of the chassis. Removed 4 nuts from captive bolts in the radiator. Removed top and bottom hoses from the radiator. Disconnected petrol pipes from the carb. Detached some cables from clips on the body.
December 2018 - I put the Rialto in the garage and got it up on the lift. The car came with a Haynes manual for the Robin and Kitten. There was nothing in this about how to take the body off the chassis, neither could I find anything specifically Rialto on the web, though I did find a site on You Tube dismantling an earlier model. I could see from this that the chassis on mine was different. In the absence of any other guidance I got stuck in. I found that the seat belt anchorages double as body mountings, so all of these came off. Underneath there were three brackets along each side of the chassis, with bolts through to the floor of the body shell. Most of these came out without any problems, but one of the front ones sheared off. At the rear of the car there were five bolts through from the estate car load area into captive nuts in the chassis. In this area there were also several hinges pop rivetted through the seat back hinges into the floor. These I drilled out. Next I removed two bolts that went through the side of the engine bay under the bonnet, near the radiator. I then removed the steering column, splitting it at the UJ just inside the drivers footwell. I took off the steering wheel and the multi switch, then removed the column support bracket (four nuts inside the engine bay on captive studs welded to the bracket. This allowed the steering column to be removed. I was then able to lift the rear body about 30mm, but it was hard to do this, even using the lift to help.
November 2018 - Finding a donor – I searched ebay for Reliant Rialtos. There were several ongoing auctions. I won the auction for a 1990 Rialto SE located in Scunthorpe. The owner Shaun offered to drive the car down to my home for £1.00/mile. I thought this would be a good test of the car and took up his offer. The car made it without problems. I drove it round the block (not a great experience) and handed over the cash. I then took Shaun to Derby station in my Scimitar.
16/3/2020 I've spent a lot of time since my last post working on the design and building of a nose cone for the car. I have used measurements taken from the nose cone lent to me by Bob Diggory, an image of a completed car from a period Jeffrey brochure and measurements from my chassis to make a simple buck.
29/3/2020 Day 5 of the Corona virus lock down and I'm using some of the time to get this blog page updated. There has been a long gap since my last post while waiting for Jo White to start work on the chassis modifications and getting the chassis back in February, since when I have been replacing a couple of rusty chassis tubes and getting some paint on. Jo has done a huge amount of work to bring the chassis up to a raceable standard. The main items he has attended to are as follows;
- Building a new ROPS to meet MSUK requirements. The new hoop is the full width of the chassis to maintain a visual link with the original but giving greater clearance above the top of my helmet, with two forward stays added. The new hoop is built of bigger and better tube than the original.
- Making hard points for a five-point harness
- Welding in engine and gearbox mounts
- Shortening the prop shaft
- Completely rebuilding the front chassis frame with new pick-up points for the top and bottom wishbones and inboard coilovers
- Reconstructing the pick-up points for the rear axle trailing links and coil overs
- Changing the alignment of the top chassis tube under my right arm to give me more room for twirling the steering wheel.
An update on the nosecone - via the Historic 750 Drivers Forum I made contact with Bob Diggory who is also rebuilding a Jeffrey and has the original aluminium nosecone for the car. Bob very kindly allowed me to borrow the cone over the winter and I have taken the key measurements from it that will allow me to make a reasonable copy in due course.
15/6/2019 In parallel with the chassis mods I have been designing a nosecone that I will make in glassfibre. I found a very good set of tutorial videos on you tube posted by Easy Composites. I have worked out the lines of a nose cone that is loosly based on the one in the Jeffrey brochure. I'll use these to make a plug mould and then laminate up a nosecone from it. I'll keep the plug mould in case I ever need to make another.
15/6/2019 The 'bonnet' that I want to fit has necessitated some further modifications to the chassis. I need the top rails that run from immediately behind the nosecone to the 'dashboard' frame on which the lower edges of the bonnet will sit to be straight, but previous modifcations by earlier owners of the car have resulted in the rails being kinked in both plan and elevation, and not very well aligned and out of plumb. I have therefore cut them out and replaced them with straight bars. This has resulted in some of the connecting chassis tubes now not being long enough to weld to the new rails and/or not being aligned correctly so they have had to be variously modified or replaced. I'll put some photos in the chassis gallery.
11/6/2019 Have been sourcing assistance with the making of a new ROPS. This is going to involve a bit of waiting for a slot in the fabrication shop so I have been giving some thought to modifications of the front end of the chassis. I have decided that I would like to return the car to something similar to that shown in the factory brochure for the Jeffrey MkIIIB which you can see here. Scaling on the photo indicates that the height of the 'bonnet' is about 100mm - probably 4" given the imperial dimensions apparent in the rest of the chassis. Having cut out the chassis cross member over the driver's thighs I can make the replacement a structural member with a shape to suit the rear edge of the bonnet. The brochure photgraph suggests that the radius to which the longitudinal edge of the bonnet is curved is also 4". Then I will also need to make a nose cone for the car. The shape of this is fairly well illustrated by the images in the brochure, though I will have to work out some suitable overall dimensions. I have been looking at some Youtube videos of a Jeffrey IIIB restoration posted by 'Doug's Shed' - search in Youtube and you will find them. Doug's car appears to have an aluminium nose cone of a different shape.
28/5/19 I've been working for a few days on the seat for the racer. The car came with a fibreglass seat but this was not mounted in the car. I have made a lightweight plywood frame for the seat that fits in the chassis and lets me try out various positions for the shell. I have also cut out an unnecessary bit of shaping on the right side of the seat that cuts into the drivers space and was probably introduced to fit around the frame of whatever car it was previously used on. Since I am fairly broad in the beam any extra width I can get is useful. Once I am happy with the position of the seat I'll fibreglass in a couple of lateral bars that can be used to mount it to the chassis.
13/5/19 Been thinking about what order to do the chassis mods in. I need to replace the ROPS because the existing bar doesn't meet current regs, have a weld in the middle. To design a new ROPS I need to know what my seating position will be since this will fix the height and longitudinal location of the top of my head. At the same time I want to increase the height of the space that my legs have to fit through whan I get into the car - at present I need knees that fold forward to get in! I'm therefore planning to cut out the cross member that the steering column bolts to and replace it about 75mm higher. See photo . I want to be comfortable and not lying too flat. There is plenty of length in the driver's space to allow that but I'd rather be sitting up a bit, even if this increases drag. I'll make an adjustable seat buck and use this to find the best seating position.
9/5/19 Copy of '750 Racer' arrived. A good read and a lot of useful information. Also a bit of background on Jeffrey and the MkIII, which was the basis of Dick Harvey's first venture into building his own cars.
5/5/19 Went to the 750MC meeting at Mallory Park. This was my first meeting since deciding to get involved. Met several of the drivers and talked to scrutineer Alan Dorrell and elegibility man Ron Welsh. Ron suggested sending him details of my car ASAP. Ron also recommended the book '750 Racer' by Peter Herbert and Dick Harvey for the section on 'Making the Robin Fly'. H750F only had one race, the 2nd to last of the day, which was marred by Mike Harvey having a heavy contact with the barrier on Gerard's Bend after swerving to avoid a spinning car. Mike was taken to hospital but apart from some brusing was not too badly hurt. Then after the race was restarted it was almost immediately stopped again when a spectator collopsed and the remaining ambulance was used to take them to hospital, leaving the track without ambulance cover. After a lengthy delay the race was restated for the 2nd time and run through to the end.
4/5/19 Went to the Donington Historic meeting. Parked with the RSSOC in the infiekld. Lots of good racing and bought two books with a Reliant theme, one Don Pither's book on the three wheelers, the other by Elvis Payne about the Scimitar.
April 2019 I spent most of my spare time during April clearing and organising my workshop.
24/3/19 - Practical Classics show at the NEC. Talked to Powersparks and bought a coil, distributor and set of HT leads on the recommendation of Dave Depper.
15/3/19 - bought some industrial grade racking for the storage unit. Collected it from Barnsley using the car trailer behind my Discovery TD5.
12/3/19 - Bought a car trailer on ebay - £600. A twin axle job. A bit battered but will do the job after a bit of renovation. It's big enough to carry a normal sized car so will be useful for the collection in general, though it's bigger than it needs to be for the racing car.
5/3/2019 - I had a long phone call with Dave Depper about tuning Reliant engines. Gathered a lot of good information.
4/3/2019 - took a lease on a storage unit so that I could clear out my home garage/workshop ready for some serious action on the Jeffrey.
22/2/2019 - Went to Race Retro exhibition at Stoneleigh Park. Bought three books on the subject of tuning and preparing racing cars. These are David Vizard's How to Build Horsepower (CarTech), How to Build, Modify and Power Tune Cylinder Heads (SpeedPro Series and Sports Car & Kit Car Suspension, Brakes High Performance Manual (SpeedPro Series). All worthwhile I think. I also signed up for a year to Historic Racing & Technology magazine (Kimberley Media Group) on the basis of some interesting reading on early Lotus cars and other articles relevant to the H750F.
6/2/2019 Sent off cheque for £135 for control camshaft.
5/2/2019 Downloaded 2019 Motorsport UK regulations.
1/2/19 - Alternator wiring insulation was very hard and cracked – needed replacement. Terminals in the alternator connector can be released by inserting a slim blade into the cutout that exists on the face of the plug that goes into the alternator. According to a web search the Rialto alternator is a Lucas 18ACR 45 amp. Used search term 'crimp terminals for lucas alternator' and found replacement kits for the plug.
30/1/2019 Thread into gearbox casing for engine mounts is 3/8” UNF 5/8” long.
29/1/2019 Got 4 as my race number in response to list of available numbers from Lyndon. Since last entry most of the work I have done has been to design a prony brake dynamometer. See Youtube for examples. I want to see how much power the standard engine has and then progressively test it as I prepare it for racing.
12/1/19 - Went to the AutoSport show at the NEC
11/1/19 the work done last week was getting the engine running in the chassis. All the wiring for the ignition had to be recreated because most of it was left behind on the body. The ignition system had been recently overhauled by the previous owner, including an Accuspark electronic ignition system. There is an issue with the distributor cap, which does nor register with the distributor body and so can twist, thus affecting the ignition timing. This can be sorted. Got the engine running – set up a ballast resistor system using a new resistor that I had bought for the Scimitar but not yet fitted. Engine ran much better once the vacuum advance was reconnected.
29/12/18 The drivers seat front outer bracket has two bolts into captive nuts in the chassis rail. There is one bolt in each footwell going through the toe board into captive nuts in the rising chassis members. The brake pipe unions near the master cylinder (2 pipes) need to be separated. Detach speedo, throttle and choke cables and any wires that go between the engine/chassis and the body. Detach the handbrake cables. Loosen the petrol filler pipe. Then the body can be lifted away from the chassis.
28/12/18 split the two ball joints and removed the ‘track rod’ and then removed the steering box (three bolts into captive nuts, two easy to get to, one less so. Tried lift the front of the body – moved about 5mm but then was lifting the whole front of the chassis. Removed 4 nuts from captive bolts in the radiator. Removed top and bottom hoses from the radiator. Disconnected petrol pipes from the carb. Detached some cables from clips on the body.
December 2018 - I put the Rialto in the garage and got it up on the lift. The car came with a Haynes manual for the Robin and Kitten. There was nothing in this about how to take the body off the chassis, neither could I find anything specifically Rialto on the web, though I did find a site on You Tube dismantling an earlier model. I could see from this that the chassis on mine was different. In the absence of any other guidance I got stuck in. I found that the seat belt anchorages double as body mountings, so all of these came off. Underneath there were three brackets along each side of the chassis, with bolts through to the floor of the body shell. Most of these came out without any problems, but one of the front ones sheared off. At the rear of the car there were five bolts through from the estate car load area into captive nuts in the chassis. In this area there were also several hinges pop rivetted through the seat back hinges into the floor. These I drilled out. Next I removed two bolts that went through the side of the engine bay under the bonnet, near the radiator. I then removed the steering column, splitting it at the UJ just inside the drivers footwell. I took off the steering wheel and the multi switch, then removed the column support bracket (four nuts inside the engine bay on captive studs welded to the bracket. This allowed the steering column to be removed. I was then able to lift the rear body about 30mm, but it was hard to do this, even using the lift to help.
November 2018 - Finding a donor – I searched ebay for Reliant Rialtos. There were several ongoing auctions. I won the auction for a 1990 Rialto SE located in Scunthorpe. The owner Shaun offered to drive the car down to my home for £1.00/mile. I thought this would be a good test of the car and took up his offer. The car made it without problems. I drove it round the block (not a great experience) and handed over the cash. I then took Shaun to Derby station in my Scimitar.
© Richard Long, 2022
