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Whilst June was a quiet month, July was quite the opposite. At the beginning of July I took Lucie over to the Dosthill Boys Club Open Day in Tamworth where she was on show with several other Reliants. All went well though I noticed that the back doors were getting harder and harder to open as the mechanism that operates that rods was starting to stiffen up. A big blob of grease however soon rectified the issue.
After this Lucie was then on display at Cars in the Park in Lichfield as part of a R3W Reliant display amongst hundreds of other classic cars. She even got a 5 minute spot in the arena as the commentator had a quick chat about her along with a Bond Bug and a Reliant Fox. The event was about 7 - 8 miles away from home and driving home the engine suddenly became terribly noisy as though there was no oil in there. I stopped and check, the oil was just under full and the water was OK though needed topping up. As the engine was so noisy, I was half expecting to see a piston or something flying through the bonnet. Once home and back on the Internet, I accessed that as the day had been so warm, the oil had got too hot and alas too thin. At the moment she has 30 grade in there though ideally for summer should have at least 50 grade.
Glad I had sorted out what was causing the noise, the next day I took her out to to se how she sounded. All the noises I heard before were still there though at least ten times quieter so it definitely must have been the oil getting too hot. I had a look at a few things for cooling things down like an electric water pump, oil cooler and a fan on the radiator though need to work out how this would fit on as ideally I wouldn’t want them visible. One thing I will do is flush the system incase the thermocycle system is working properly and causing things to get hot, especially as I do not have a working temperature gauge at the moment.
Lucie does seem to be running a bit rough at the moment so I shall have to give her a full service as soon as I can. That said, towards the end of July, Lucie was hoisted aboard the trailer and taken down to Kent to the Register of Unusual Microcars celebration weekend. It was pretty much a five hour drive there and another 5 hours back though was well worth it.
Elvis Payne
July 2009
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