1988 Reliant Scimitar SS1 Ti

Blimey , not seen one of these in the wild for years. Used to be a couple local to us going back quite a while now. Am i dreaming but dont they crop up a hill trials too?

No, you’re not dreaming, there are 3 or 4 well know trials ones, some who are also RSSOC members.

They are surprisingly good in their class.

To get more power from the CA18ET is easy!  Plug the Blow Off Valve on the Inlet Manifold, fit a bleed valve to the waste gate actuator and a boost gauge to be able to wind up the turbo to 11 psi.  Simple!  This get a useful increase in power for very little cost or risk.

But... I already had a 2wd Cassie intercooler, a Canadian inlet manifold with a bigger plenum, a T25 hybrid turbo, and a couple of other trick bits that allowed the SST to run reliably with 192bhp! And they were all just sitting on the shelf 🤔.

So the plan was to install the intercooler & the Canadian inlet manifold that it gives the front facing throttle body which makes the induction track shorter when you install the intercooler.  The down side is that you have to re-plumb the cooling pipe work, remodel the wiring to put the sensor plugs in the right place and move the battery out of he way!

The first issue is that the hard pipe pressed into the block from the water pump fowls the underside of the inlet manifold so I had to cut the pipe between the block & the 2 smaller brake out stubs leaving enough room for a silicone hose & clamp to lower the take off. After a play with loads of 32mm silicon hoses the top and bottom hoses to the rad were plumbed and with a bit more ingenuity the turbo water cooling and the oil cooler pipe work were reinstated.

The intercooler was mounted behind the radiator but fed with high speed cold air by an aluminium ‘hockey stick’ shaped ducting which pulled air from under the chin spoiler and throws it through the inter cooler. It also pushes the hot air from the rad up to the bonnet vents. All good although I look back at the blue silicon pipework with a shudder😳



Moving Forward to November 2015 and the finely honed plan of upgrading with the aid of bits from my shelf of spares from the SST came to a grinding halt!  

The plan was that after completing the inlet side I'd move to the exhaust side and do a simple mod to space the standard exhaust manifold away from the head by 18mm which makes the B*****d nut a lot easier to access. The B*****d Nut is so called because it sits under the exhaust manifold and behind the turbo meaning access is only with a S shaped ring spanner and can only be moved 1/8 of a turn at a time!

However once I finally got it all undone it became clear that the job was going to be a bit bigger than that!

One of the numerous inspired Reliant design features is that on the turbo SS range, the wiring loom for the coil, afm & otter switch run down the top of the chassis on the near side fully exposed to the heat of the turbo & exhaust! Now to be fair, they did also put a heat shield around the manifold & some of the turbo, but its not quite man enough for the job.

At first glance the tape covering to the loom didn't look to badly scorched but on closer inspection, with the turbo & manifold out of the way, not only was the tape burnt but so was the plastic trunking and all but 2 of the wires!

What ensued for the next 8 hrs was a cycle of cutting out the crispy section of wire, soldering the new section, realising that I'd forgotten to put the heat shrink on, unsolder one of the new joints, put the heat shrink on & re-solder the joint!  Once the loom was repaired, I recovered it in tape, a new longer section of the plastic trunking, and then another 2-3 layers of tape. I also added a section of the trunking to the wires from the main loom up to the coil & transistor.

The repairs completed, the car would not fire!  It would crank, there was fuel, there was spark (sometimes!) but it would not fire!

Long story short, I traced the initial fault to the power transistor which was changed & it fired, ran for a short time & died before refusing to start again! Eventually I retraced the wiring repairs and further down the loom I found 2 other sections that had already been repaired by PO’s unknown. The more I looked, the worse it got!

What followed was a sever loss of mojo and 5 years of not looking at it in the garage!

After several years of being busy again with my businesses and the family growing up fast, I lost my Mum in 2019. Over the following months it caused a bit of a moment where I stopped and took stock and I decided that I needed to go back to something I did just for me.  This meant slimming down the business commitments and pulling the SS1 out of the garage.

Initially I gave the car and all the spares to a Friend who runs a Restorations & Race Prep Shop. He primarily works on the GT & GTE’s and I have always admired the standards of his projects. So a spec & budget were agreed but what with Covid & the lack of movement on the project, it has been brought back to my Unit and I’ve started on it in earnest again!

So this thread will be where I keep a meandering record of the project progress for what’s now known as Just Plain Silly. Just Plain Silly because that’s what I’m now going to build!  It’s black & gold (JPS Lotus black & gold!), and it’s going to be silly in more ways than one.

The mildly modified engine has been replaced by a monster which was destined for the SST but it’s there and it’s too good not to use. It’s specs are:
- CA18ET block
- oil galleries drilled & tapped for oil squirters (they can have a problem with the little end’s in high performance engines) 
- knife edged crank
- Custom Crank brace
- Pauter forged rods
- Wisco forged pistons
- ARP Bolts
- Lightened Flywheel 
- Fully balanced
- Custom big valve head stage 3 flowed
- Autosprint cam
- Cometic metal head gasket
- Custom tubular exhaust manifold ceramic coated 
- Garrett GT2860 turbo
- Custom CA20 Inlet Manifold with 8 x 440cc injectors
- Custom 65mm throttle body
- Remote oil filter & oil cooler
- Custom 2.5” exhaust
- Emerald K3 ECU

A similar spec engine has been used in a 180SX and mapped at 520bhp😳 but the rear suspension on the SS1 wouldn’t cope with that so the aid is for the 300-350 mark with selectable maps. To be clear, I’m not about the MAX POWER, destroying tyres in clouds of smoke, boy racer stylie!  The car will be used for Hill Climbs & Sprints and the odd B-road blast.  It’s there to put a smile on my face and hopefully of a few others who recognise the garagista engineering that will have gone into it. 

To that end here’s a couple of gratuitous engine porn shots and tanks for reading this far.

 

Great thread but let me introduce you to a better picture uploader for the forum - really straight forward instructions here: 

brm-forum.org/thread/253/image-hosting-update-live

It means we can see your pics in full size glory - please give it a go - any issues just let one of the admins know and we will be along to assist 

I know of this car and it's owner CrouchieB from the RSSOC website, I've been a long time lurker on there and can tell you that you're in for a treat with this car, I'll say no more  

Enjoying being able to catch up and read about this one, pictures help the previous explanations 👍😉

Slightly more worrying though - Was it really that long ago we picked the white SST up?! 😳

Im loving this, this is going to be a rocket, . the only thing I would suggest is get the air gap smaller for the crank sensor, I think Emeralds Dave Walker says between 0.2 and 0.5mm, I had my crank sensor mounted similarly on my cortina, after running the car for a couple of years it developed a problem with no crank signal, that was caused by a slight amount of corrosion of the alloy bracket moving the sensor away from the sensor wheel, it wasn't a lot of movement, but took ages to realise what the problem was.....

Coming together nicely 👍. Want to add wiring a Celica and MGB to your electrickery list when you visit? 🤣