Latest news - The life of Riley JTA 638E

We have owned our 1967 Riley Kestrel since July 2006 and since the beginning of this year she has been used every day.

We came across her during a conversation with a friend when we mentioned that we were looking for an Austin 1100 or similar for a rolling restoration. Although she had been dry stored in a local barn for over ten years and the bodywork was in reasonable condition, there was going to be work to get her back on the road safely. Sadly she didn't come with any paperwork apart from the old logbook, which tells us she was registered on 1st February 1967 and changed ownership on the 21st April 1978, making her forty years old and ourselves now the third owners. (Apparently she had loads of history and spare parts but these were destroyed by the family of the late owner and it was only the grandson who bought the actual car that saved it from going to an unknown destination, probably the scrap yard.) The registration document states that she was originally an 1100 model but somewhere over the years the engine was replaced with a 1300.

Over the next few months, in between our own work and with the help of RPM Workshops and Ebay for parts, Dave rebuilt the engine, gearbox, overhauled the brakes and fitted a new clutch. He was also able to fit a secondhand green tune conversion that we had kicking around in our stores to take unleaded petrol.

We finally got her back on the road by the middle of January 2007. With the new MoT certificate showing 54271 miles, Dave wasn't expecting me to put miles on in the first few weeks of running but due to my father being very poorly I soon found myself clocking up between 40 and 60 miles a day. Mechanically, apart from the first week when the throttle cable shorted out on me when I was filling up with petrol at my local garage and had to be pulled back home, and two days later having to be started with a screw driver under the bonnet as I couldn't get her started, she has been running fine ever since.

(Good news, we found a throttle cable at the back of the stores still in its original bag and the starting problem was my fault - I was using the wrong key in the ignition!)

She has still got a few ongoing problems that need further attention.

The speedo and rev counter are not working properly. (Unknown to me, when I was supposed to be running her in at 50 miles an hour I was doing more like 70!). The original fuel pump is starting to slow up. She stopped on us once whilst overtaking, under load going up a hill. However, left for a few minutes she went again and hasn't been any trouble since, but we have a new SU pump waiting, just in case. We also discovered she had a bad water leak that would fill up the car quite quickly, but with a new front window seal now fitted this seams to have cured most of the problem.

The speedo and rev counter are not working properly. (Unknown to me, when I was supposed to be running
her in at 50 miles an hour I was doing more like 70!). The original fuel pump is starting to slow up. She stopped on us once whilst overtaking, under load going up a hill. However, left for a few minutes she went again and hasn't been any trouble since, but we have a new SU pump waiting, just in case. We also discovered she had a bad water leak that would fill up the car quite quickly, but with a new front window seal now fitted this seams to have
cured most of the problem.

She is certainly attracting us a lot of attention and is good fun to drive. We have even got my seventeen year old son Robert learning to drive in her, although he has lost confidence since we had the tyres changed. The new ones don't seem to handle as well.