Cheers all, over to you. Bob.
Reliant rear axle ID
-
firebob22
- Part of the Furniture
- Posts: 279
- Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2016 4:49 pm
- Location: Clacton-on-Sea
- Contact:
Reliant rear axle ID
Hi all, I know this might be a dumb question, but is there any way of identifying a Reliant rear axle from a number stamped into it? I need to order some bearings & oil seals but have no idea exactly what model or year I have. The only numbers I can find on it is on a flat on the diff. This has 70568 & next to it & below the letter B. I'm not au fait with anything to do with cars & don't know how else I can id it. I've looked at various diagrams etc., & they all look pretty similar, but I just want to make sure.
Cheers all, over to you. Bob.
Cheers all, over to you. Bob.
Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the restraints! 
-
lepchaun
- Moved in and now we can't get rid
- Posts: 5350
- Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 8:20 am
- Location: worksop notts
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
if u ring 01332380092 they do the reliant parts and he will work out what axel u have from them numbers the B is the best ratio axel if its genuine
-
UGLYMICK
- Part of the Furniture
- Posts: 805
- Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:45 pm
- Location: HASTINGS EAST SUSSEX
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
here a Gide to what you need to do
There's two ways to do this, one is to go off and re-invent the wheel, the other is to tread the path of least resistence. If you're thinking "Yeah, re-invent the wheel, that's for me..." well the doors over there, off you go, and good luck.
Clearly there are two basic elements to a bike based trike, you got the bike, you got the axle. Starting with the obvious there's the bike to consider. Chain drive isn't impossible, but it does bring a lot of problems with it, though admittedly none of those are insoluble. However, there's something that a lot of people miss here. It's all very well converting an axle to chain drive and screwing around with all that, but if you have to stop and re-pack the differential with grease every 50 miles, in my book you didn't solve the #$%%%%* problem...
What I'm trying to do here is sketch out the basics for building, with minimal effort, a trike where the aim is to have the sort of usability you'd expect if it came from the factory that way. Get on it, ride it 1000 miles, only put gas in the tank, air in the tires, and check the oil. Reasonable MPG, and the ability to both climb hills and cruise at highway speeds (or better...).
First thing then is to choose the base bike carefully. I've already implied that it ought to be a shaft drive bike, but I'd lean towards either a Suzuki or a Yamaha as opposed to a Kawasaki or a Honda. Kawasaki make some fine motorcycles, but they use a weird fitting on the drive shaft of their shaft driven bikes. Not an insoluble problem, but an uncessary one. Hondas, well TBH, I plain don't like Honda's design philosophy, there way more concerned about showing the world what a bunch of smartasses they are than actually making usable products. Because of that prejudice, I've never looked that closely at how they hook their drive shafts to their motors. What you're looking for is a flange with four bolt holes in it, get a manual, look at some pictures.
Suzuki and Yamaha tend to use four bolt flanges on their shaft drive stuff. This makes them pretty easy to adapt to drive a car axle using a hydrid drive shaft. Some Yamahas have a cast knuckle on the drive shaft (V-Max for one) which is #$%%%%* horrible, but uses the same spline fitting as the flanged ones, so bolting an XJ 900 flange on there is pretty straight forward on all the ones I've ever encountered (though that's not all of 'em...). Some, if not all Yamaha flanges (dunno about Suzukis) have the same bolt pattern as some Toyotas, which makes life easy if the budget stretches to having a drive shaft built using new parts throughout.
The majority of bikes have the drive shaft on the left of the bike (though some, BMW, Gold Wing, Moto Guzzi, have it on the right), and most (though not all) car axles will have drive shafts that rotate the opposite way. That may be a factor in making a decision about a bike if you're planning on covering literally tens of thousands of miles a year on the finished trike. A bike with a drive shaft on the left, will normally mean flipping the axle, and that in turn means the hypoid cut rear axle is running backwards, this will increase the wear on the axle. Instead of lasting for 100's of thousands of miles hauling several tons of car around, it'll probably only last the 100,000 miles hauling nowhere near a ton of trike around. Yeah, %#$$ it was what I thought too...
OK, you picked out a bike, what's next? Well the rear wheels and tires believe it or not. Two reasons, the rear wheels and tires will affect the height the rear axle needs to be above the ground. Pretty hard to sort out the frame if you got no idea where the axle has to go...
Second thing is that the taller the rear wheel and tire combo you choose, then the further the wheel (and hence the trike) will travel for one turn of the wheels. Taller wheels, you need a taller diff ratio, so not only does the height of the wheel tire combo dictate the position of the axle, it has an effect on the choice of the final drive gearing too.
That's a major issue, as I see lots of trikes that are just plain #$%%%%* unpleasant to ride because they're screaming their tits off at 10,000 rpm at 70mph, and more rarely I see one that's a @$@!% to hill start because the gearing is to tall.
Either count up, or look up, the reduction of the stock final bevel on the bike. Say it's 3:1 that means that for one turn of the drive shaft, the rear wheel is turned by 1/3. The next bit is either obvious, or you just want to trust me on this, the height of the stock wheel/tire combo divided by the ratio (in this case 1/3) gives us a "magic" number. So if, in this case the stcok wheel/tire was 24", the Magic number is 24/3 or 8.
If the new wheel tire combo has a height of 28", divide that by the "magic" number and you get 3.5, which means that using those wheels and tires, you'd need a 3.5:1 final drive to keep the stock gearing.
As a rule shooting for 10% lower gearing is the safe bet, so I'd be looking for an axle with a final drive ratio of between 3.85:1 to 3.5:1.
That holds true for whatever you decide to do at the rear, IRS or rigid.
For my money, IRS (or any rear suspension) is a waste of time and effort on a trike. Rigids ride nearly as good and handle better. You know how riding @$@!% on a rigid bike is way more uncomfortable than actualy riding it? Well that's because the further in front of the axle line you sit the smoother the ride is. I set rigid trikes up with the center line of the axle where the rear most edge of the stock wheel used to be, and that seems to work.
This also make the wheelbase a little longer which helps with the stability quite a lot (less chance if steering wobbles) and reduces the steering effort a little. Combined with the more forgiving car tires (taller profiles make more sense here...) and the fact that if one rear wheel hits a 4" bump, then the diff only goes up 2" make the ride a LOT more comfortable than a rigid bike.
I like axles out of leaf sprung cars as the "perches" for the laef spings are easy to make mountings to suit. Bolted on using the stock locating pin and "U" bolts, if it turns out you screwed up and misaligned the axle, it's easier to fix the alignment issues.
BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that when you apply drive to the rear axle, it's going to go forwards. As I said earlier, if the bike's drive shaft is on the left, then this will usually involve flipping the axle over. At this point the axle's breather will dump oil all over the floor. So you'll need to deal with that. Last one I did, I tore the breather off, cut some rubber and a piece of steel, then hoseclipped that over the hole to seal it. Popped off the pressed rear cover, drilled a 5/8" hole in that and welded in an elbow. Re-fitted the cover, an fitted a little K&N style "filter" to the elbow.
That was because, where possible I don't like to weld on the axle, because if I don't weld on it, I can't distort it.
People who are saying things like "Yeah but I've got a %%+%#% back..." should take into account that IRS set ups fall OUT in bends and that has serious implications for the steering effort which ALL has to go through your lower back.
Moving the axle line back a little also means that the UJ's in the drive shaft are at less of an angle and will have a much easier time of it. Last one I did, I had the drive shaft custom made, and it sounded like quite a lot of money, until you looked that the cost of swapping out used UJ's for new ones if I made the shaft myself. By the time I'd factored in hunting around for parts, it was starting to look cheap...
Rear brakes, well I just use what came on the axle, most Euro stuff seems to work best with a 5/8" master cylinder and a 6;1 pedal ratio. American stuff might need a bigger bore m/cylinder, not sure, ask some Hot rod guys, or midget racers or something. Or choose cheap, generic stuff that you can swap out if you need to. :ph34r:
There are some issues with UJ phasing, flange alignment, and that sort of @!+@, but there's plenty of "how-to" hot rod tech articles out there that cover that stuff.
Frame, well remember that trikes experience much larger lateral loads than bikes. You got two major choices going this route, attaching the axle to a mostly stock frame to build something that's more or less going to look like a stock bike with three wheels, though is you started with something like an XVS650 Yam, that could be quite cool, or you appraoch the thing a little more full on and keep the lower half of the engine cradle from the stock frame and approach the job more like hardtailing a a stock frame to get more of a "chopper" profile.
Last word, trikes work best with WAAAY less trail the bikes, and they subject the forks to all sorts of horrible forces that forks in general aren't very good at. You want long forks and big rakes, girders or leading links is the way to go. Trail numbers between 1 1/2" and 1/2" (yeah, half of an inch) work best.
Paraplegics may NEED to have those sort of numbers to be able to steer the thing at all.
That's it I guess, hardly comprehensive, and certainly not the only way to go about it. But on the other hand it's laid out a few of the major pitfalls (ans the solutions), and if all you want is a trike, then that's about the easierst way to get there.
hope this helps
There's two ways to do this, one is to go off and re-invent the wheel, the other is to tread the path of least resistence. If you're thinking "Yeah, re-invent the wheel, that's for me..." well the doors over there, off you go, and good luck.
Clearly there are two basic elements to a bike based trike, you got the bike, you got the axle. Starting with the obvious there's the bike to consider. Chain drive isn't impossible, but it does bring a lot of problems with it, though admittedly none of those are insoluble. However, there's something that a lot of people miss here. It's all very well converting an axle to chain drive and screwing around with all that, but if you have to stop and re-pack the differential with grease every 50 miles, in my book you didn't solve the #$%%%%* problem...
What I'm trying to do here is sketch out the basics for building, with minimal effort, a trike where the aim is to have the sort of usability you'd expect if it came from the factory that way. Get on it, ride it 1000 miles, only put gas in the tank, air in the tires, and check the oil. Reasonable MPG, and the ability to both climb hills and cruise at highway speeds (or better...).
First thing then is to choose the base bike carefully. I've already implied that it ought to be a shaft drive bike, but I'd lean towards either a Suzuki or a Yamaha as opposed to a Kawasaki or a Honda. Kawasaki make some fine motorcycles, but they use a weird fitting on the drive shaft of their shaft driven bikes. Not an insoluble problem, but an uncessary one. Hondas, well TBH, I plain don't like Honda's design philosophy, there way more concerned about showing the world what a bunch of smartasses they are than actually making usable products. Because of that prejudice, I've never looked that closely at how they hook their drive shafts to their motors. What you're looking for is a flange with four bolt holes in it, get a manual, look at some pictures.
Suzuki and Yamaha tend to use four bolt flanges on their shaft drive stuff. This makes them pretty easy to adapt to drive a car axle using a hydrid drive shaft. Some Yamahas have a cast knuckle on the drive shaft (V-Max for one) which is #$%%%%* horrible, but uses the same spline fitting as the flanged ones, so bolting an XJ 900 flange on there is pretty straight forward on all the ones I've ever encountered (though that's not all of 'em...). Some, if not all Yamaha flanges (dunno about Suzukis) have the same bolt pattern as some Toyotas, which makes life easy if the budget stretches to having a drive shaft built using new parts throughout.
The majority of bikes have the drive shaft on the left of the bike (though some, BMW, Gold Wing, Moto Guzzi, have it on the right), and most (though not all) car axles will have drive shafts that rotate the opposite way. That may be a factor in making a decision about a bike if you're planning on covering literally tens of thousands of miles a year on the finished trike. A bike with a drive shaft on the left, will normally mean flipping the axle, and that in turn means the hypoid cut rear axle is running backwards, this will increase the wear on the axle. Instead of lasting for 100's of thousands of miles hauling several tons of car around, it'll probably only last the 100,000 miles hauling nowhere near a ton of trike around. Yeah, %#$$ it was what I thought too...
OK, you picked out a bike, what's next? Well the rear wheels and tires believe it or not. Two reasons, the rear wheels and tires will affect the height the rear axle needs to be above the ground. Pretty hard to sort out the frame if you got no idea where the axle has to go...
Second thing is that the taller the rear wheel and tire combo you choose, then the further the wheel (and hence the trike) will travel for one turn of the wheels. Taller wheels, you need a taller diff ratio, so not only does the height of the wheel tire combo dictate the position of the axle, it has an effect on the choice of the final drive gearing too.
That's a major issue, as I see lots of trikes that are just plain #$%%%%* unpleasant to ride because they're screaming their tits off at 10,000 rpm at 70mph, and more rarely I see one that's a @$@!% to hill start because the gearing is to tall.
Either count up, or look up, the reduction of the stock final bevel on the bike. Say it's 3:1 that means that for one turn of the drive shaft, the rear wheel is turned by 1/3. The next bit is either obvious, or you just want to trust me on this, the height of the stock wheel/tire combo divided by the ratio (in this case 1/3) gives us a "magic" number. So if, in this case the stcok wheel/tire was 24", the Magic number is 24/3 or 8.
If the new wheel tire combo has a height of 28", divide that by the "magic" number and you get 3.5, which means that using those wheels and tires, you'd need a 3.5:1 final drive to keep the stock gearing.
As a rule shooting for 10% lower gearing is the safe bet, so I'd be looking for an axle with a final drive ratio of between 3.85:1 to 3.5:1.
That holds true for whatever you decide to do at the rear, IRS or rigid.
For my money, IRS (or any rear suspension) is a waste of time and effort on a trike. Rigids ride nearly as good and handle better. You know how riding @$@!% on a rigid bike is way more uncomfortable than actualy riding it? Well that's because the further in front of the axle line you sit the smoother the ride is. I set rigid trikes up with the center line of the axle where the rear most edge of the stock wheel used to be, and that seems to work.
This also make the wheelbase a little longer which helps with the stability quite a lot (less chance if steering wobbles) and reduces the steering effort a little. Combined with the more forgiving car tires (taller profiles make more sense here...) and the fact that if one rear wheel hits a 4" bump, then the diff only goes up 2" make the ride a LOT more comfortable than a rigid bike.
I like axles out of leaf sprung cars as the "perches" for the laef spings are easy to make mountings to suit. Bolted on using the stock locating pin and "U" bolts, if it turns out you screwed up and misaligned the axle, it's easier to fix the alignment issues.
BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that when you apply drive to the rear axle, it's going to go forwards. As I said earlier, if the bike's drive shaft is on the left, then this will usually involve flipping the axle over. At this point the axle's breather will dump oil all over the floor. So you'll need to deal with that. Last one I did, I tore the breather off, cut some rubber and a piece of steel, then hoseclipped that over the hole to seal it. Popped off the pressed rear cover, drilled a 5/8" hole in that and welded in an elbow. Re-fitted the cover, an fitted a little K&N style "filter" to the elbow.
That was because, where possible I don't like to weld on the axle, because if I don't weld on it, I can't distort it.
People who are saying things like "Yeah but I've got a %%+%#% back..." should take into account that IRS set ups fall OUT in bends and that has serious implications for the steering effort which ALL has to go through your lower back.
Moving the axle line back a little also means that the UJ's in the drive shaft are at less of an angle and will have a much easier time of it. Last one I did, I had the drive shaft custom made, and it sounded like quite a lot of money, until you looked that the cost of swapping out used UJ's for new ones if I made the shaft myself. By the time I'd factored in hunting around for parts, it was starting to look cheap...
Rear brakes, well I just use what came on the axle, most Euro stuff seems to work best with a 5/8" master cylinder and a 6;1 pedal ratio. American stuff might need a bigger bore m/cylinder, not sure, ask some Hot rod guys, or midget racers or something. Or choose cheap, generic stuff that you can swap out if you need to. :ph34r:
There are some issues with UJ phasing, flange alignment, and that sort of @!+@, but there's plenty of "how-to" hot rod tech articles out there that cover that stuff.
Frame, well remember that trikes experience much larger lateral loads than bikes. You got two major choices going this route, attaching the axle to a mostly stock frame to build something that's more or less going to look like a stock bike with three wheels, though is you started with something like an XVS650 Yam, that could be quite cool, or you appraoch the thing a little more full on and keep the lower half of the engine cradle from the stock frame and approach the job more like hardtailing a a stock frame to get more of a "chopper" profile.
Last word, trikes work best with WAAAY less trail the bikes, and they subject the forks to all sorts of horrible forces that forks in general aren't very good at. You want long forks and big rakes, girders or leading links is the way to go. Trail numbers between 1 1/2" and 1/2" (yeah, half of an inch) work best.
Paraplegics may NEED to have those sort of numbers to be able to steer the thing at all.
That's it I guess, hardly comprehensive, and certainly not the only way to go about it. But on the other hand it's laid out a few of the major pitfalls (ans the solutions), and if all you want is a trike, then that's about the easierst way to get there.
hope this helps
-
fifer
- Member
- Posts: 37
- Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2014 4:02 pm
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
Robin and Rialto axles have early and later model wheel bearing differences .
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... le-rebuild
Early axles have sliding brake wheel cylinders and different brake shoes and adjuster .
Early ones are as per ;
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... nch-wheels
The following link shows the early brake shoes and the corresponding 57mm wheel bearing and seal .
...................................
Later axles which used the 12 inch wheels are approx an inch wider overall and used the Mini brakes which are identified by the brake shoes as per ;
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... rakes/rear
The following link shows the later brake shoes and the corresponding 62mm wheel bearing and seal .
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Reliant-Robin ... Sw34FVFq2R
Phil at Brook Road Garage { BRG } on e-bay has always been a gentleman with any dealings I have had with him .
.
.
.
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... le-rebuild
Early axles have sliding brake wheel cylinders and different brake shoes and adjuster .
Early ones are as per ;
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... nch-wheels
The following link shows the early brake shoes and the corresponding 57mm wheel bearing and seal .
...................................
Later axles which used the 12 inch wheels are approx an inch wider overall and used the Mini brakes which are identified by the brake shoes as per ;
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... rakes/rear
The following link shows the later brake shoes and the corresponding 62mm wheel bearing and seal .
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Reliant-Robin ... Sw34FVFq2R
Phil at Brook Road Garage { BRG } on e-bay has always been a gentleman with any dealings I have had with him .
.
.
.
Confucius , he say ; man who take woman up hill , him not on level .
.
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... stips/home
.
.
https://sites.google.com/site/fifersrel ... stips/home
.
-
jinjachin
- Moved in and now we can't get rid
- Posts: 5538
- Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 11:24 am
- Location: old hill
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
I'm hoping someone understands the ratio bit because I'll need some help working out what size wheel combo i need to match the axel I've got .Which by the way i wont now till i open it up to refurb it
By the way guys good info
By the way guys good info
-
swirl
- Moved in and now we can't get rid
- Posts: 1976
- Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2012 5:43 pm
- Location: ellesmere port
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
If its a b axle I think they only used them for 2 years, 85/6 iirc someone will confirm
-
firebob22
- Part of the Furniture
- Posts: 279
- Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2016 4:49 pm
- Location: Clacton-on-Sea
- Contact:
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
Thanks for all the help guys, Uglymick, that's a comprehensive reply if ever I saw one! Great advice but as I bought my Dragstar trike already done from a dealer, can't really do anything about the rake/trail as you suggest, but bloody good info. Fifer, cheers for the links, really helpful. I've got a leaking oil seal in the wheel hub & as there are different bearing/seal sizes I just wanted to make sure of what axle I've got so I can order the right bits. Once again, grateful thanks to everyone for the answers. Cheers, Bob. 
Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the restraints!
-
Junior
- Newbie
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:58 pm
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
Number is not taking call for let on axle any more way to help cheers bob
-
1130cc
- Twiddler of Forum Buttons and Levers.
- Posts: 4493
- Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 7:31 pm
- Location: Cowplain, Hants
- Contact:
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
This topic is 4 years old!
someone may be able to add something to the wealth of information above.
Bikers know why dogs stick their head out of car windows.
-
Pennywise
- Newbie
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Nov 15, 2022 5:16 pm
Re: Reliant rear axle ID
Hi can anyone tell me is the number stamped on my axle is the way to identify year and model of the car it came from as I am rebuilding the axle and it has no brake cylinders or shoes and I want to get the right parts the number is 75488 with A above the numbers if that helps
Thanks Dean
Thanks Dean