reliant sidevalve with austin flywheel

[graham price]

hi all.is it normal for early reliant engines to be splash fed and have austin 7 flywheel and clutch ???

[Ruairidh Dunford]

It is my understanding that Reliant bought the rights to the A7 engine design and adapted it to suit their needs.

Pictures of what you have would be good.

[Stuart Giles]

Early SV Reliant motors were splash fed. There were some pictures of a bottom end of one of these on this site a few years ago. It had the Usual SV Reliant rods, so like the later motors, it must also have had the taller crankcase or the rods would have fouled the cam.

[graham price]

yes the crankcase is totaley  different to a7 and block and head but looks the same from a distance fly wheel and nut are the same

[Hedd_Jones]

I think these early Reliant engines are an interesting subject, one that little is written about.

Reliant were using austin engines, at some point the supply were going to dry up, probably about 1939 or sofor obvious reasons.

I would have thought, given its accepted that theu bought the rights to the engine, perhaps some or all of the tooling that their initial plan would have been to seemlessly build their own engine to slot in where the Austin engine would have, with little fuss. No doubt improved in production engineering terms, but similar in many ways.

I guess the early engines were like this, but there would have been pre war and low volume, so pretty uncommon. Over the years the design evolved and improved.

As a youngster I remember looking at a Reliant engine a friend in Colwyn Bay had. To look at it was basically a rectangular crankcase with bolt on steel engine mounts on the front and back, the rear incorporating the gearbox mounts and the starter. I seem to recall a hole in the head I assumed for the dizzy, And a sensible dynamo. All sensible improvements.

[andrew34ruby]

My 1956 Reliant was a three bearing engine with shell main bearings, so I guess a pump fed lubricating system. Though, thinking back, I never stripped the engine that far, so how did I know? It was a long time ago - 1970.