Reliant Car Engines, Kitten engine, Rebel, Fox
Reliant was a British
car manufacturer. Reliant was founded in 1935 by T L Williams to take over
making the Raleigh 3 wheeler delivery van. It was powered by a 750 cc V twin engine
to the rear wheels through a 3 speed gearbox and shaft drive. In 1939 the engine
was replaced by Reliant's version of the straight four cylinder 747cc Austin 7 side-valve
engine. Reliant car engines are available at engines and gearboxes as used,
reconditioned or secondhand.
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Reliant Engines
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Reliant Gearboxes
The straight four cylinder cars were the Kitten which had a glass fiber body and
an 850cc aluminum engine, providing economical performance, chassis and engine.
The Rebel engines varied from 598cc / 700cc /7 48cc (although sometimes later 848cc
Reliant engines are retro-fitted) and the maximum speed was around 70mph. The Fox
used 850cc aluminium engine.
The straight-4 or inline-4
is an internal combustion engine with four cylinders aligned in one row.
Nicknamed a four-banger, this straight engine configuration is the most common in
cars with a displacement up to 2.3 litres. The current "practical" limit
to the displacement of straight-4 engines in a car is around 2.7 litres. However,
in tractors and other construction machinery, four-cylinder diesel engines with
a displacement of 4.5 litres and above can still be found.
The straight-4 engine is not a balanced configuration. While a pair of pistons is
always moving up at the same time as the other pair is moving down, piston speed
- as with all internal combustion engines - is higher through the top 180 degrees
of the stroke than the bottom 180 degrees, which leads to a secondary harmonic imbalance.
While this is tolerable in a small low-displacement low-power configuration, the
vibrations get worse with increasing size and power. Most straight-4 engines below
2.0 L in displacement rely on the damping effect of their engine mounts. Today,
most engineers will make use of balance shafts above that limit. A 4-cylinder engine
needs two balance shafts, rotating at twice the crankshaft frequency, to be smooth.
Nevertheless, there were several samples of larger straight-4s in production using
no balance shafts, such as the Citroën DS 23 2347 cc engine that was a derivative
of the Traction Avant engine, and the 1948 Austin 2660 cc engine used in the Austin-Healey
100 and Austin Atlantic. These engines were generally the result of a long incremental
evolution process and their power was kept relatively low regarding their capacity.
Other models included
the:
Reliant Robin (often incorrectly referred to as a Robin Reliant). The single
wheel in the front steered,
while the engine (also in the front) drove the rear axle.
The Reliant Regal was a small three-wheeled car, there were many forms of Reliant
Regal from the Mk 1 in 1953 followed by the Mk II, Mk III, Mk IV, Mk V, Mk VI and
the Regal 3/25 and 3/30.
The Reliant Rialto was a small subcompact car.
The Reliant Sabre and the Reliant Sabre Six were small two-seater sports cars with
front-engines, with four-cylinder OHV Ford Consul engines of 1703 cc.
The Reliant Scimitars power initially started with a 2.6 L Ford straight six from
the Ford Zephyr / Ford Zodiac.