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can anyone please help my to find the roll center of a swing axle front suspension set for an Allard ???????
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have you tried going to allardmotorcompany.co.uk and if you cant find it, just email them.
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sorry its not allardmotorcompany.co.uk
its
allardmotorcompany.com
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I do not think this is the same allard as they went bankrupt I think in !952or so
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So who makes the utterly gorgeous Allard I saw on an R plate in a filling station recently then?
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I do not no that but when we owned a 1951 Allard american engined complete with chassis rust we could not get as much as screw in 1955 because the factory was bankrupt and closed down .Without a doupt somebody kept the name and once again is producing this wonderful mark.The 51 model would do wellover 100mph in a slallom as the steering was so vague and the brakes were non existant.We paid 25ukp at auction for it and scrapped it 4 months later,I am sure the new models cost a little more and are better built.
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if you look at allardmotorcompany.com you will see that in 1952/53 allard became a maker of performance parts, but still has details of allards, and even has a motor museum.
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Sydney Allard was 'Mr Shorrock Supercharger' in the 1960s and his Allard Motor Company was still in operation at that time as a Ford main dealer, but his motor car manufacturing side had long finished. Here's a tale that might be of interest, related to the best of my memory but possibly slightly adrift in some minor details ...
Around 1966, Ford Motor Co decided that supporting the new UK sport of drag-racing might be good advertising so they put up a prize for the fastest 1500cc (or 1600cc?) dragster, most of the dragsters being much larger than this. Ford worked with Sydney Allard to produce the Autolite Allard Dragonette, Autolite being the name for Ford's spares at the time and the engine being from the then-new Cortina GT.
The only real competition was from an ex-Shorrock development engineer called Leon Moss who had built a very reliable dragster using inch-square tubing for the frame (hence it was named Square One) with a 1500cc Riley engine of 1937 vintage supercharged by a Shorrock supercharger of a size that would normally be fitted to a 3-litre engine. The engine ran a very low compression ratio to give plenty of room for the mixture that the supercharger would feed in, so the engine had a much larger 'effective capacity' than the actual 1500cc. The original Riley engine valves were retained but Landrover(!) connecting rods and bearings were grafted in to take the extra power (I can't remember which crankshaft and pistons it had).
Square One ran consistent sub-10.5 second quarter miles over the ensuing months, whereas the Autolite spark plugs fitted in the Dragonette repeatedly caused it to 'fail' off the line. This, and other faults, led to black masking tape being stuck over the Autolite part of the name on the dragster, leaving it as simply 'Allard Dragonette', thus avoiding further embarrassment to the sponsors!
Unfortunately Leon, who moved from Birmingham to the village of Peakirk near Peterborough some years later, was killed when a road roller came off the back of a low loader in front of his car.
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Just remembered an example that shows that vandalism is nothing new.
The Allard Dragonette must, in fact, have been built in 1965, not 1966, because I put on a static exhibition of dragsters in June 1965 for the Perkins Sports and Family Day and the Dragonette was one of the exhibits, along with Mickey Thompson's incredible 'Mooneyes' dragster and several other US and UK machines.
Like many dragsters, the Dragonette was fitted with a braking parachute which was released by the driver pulling a cord connected to a large unbent 'split pin' holding the parachute in its bag. A visitor to the show had bent both ends of the splitpin back so that it would not have released the parachute when pulled! Thankfully I spotted this when giving the dragster a 'once-over' before returning it to Sydney Allard, otherwise ...
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Can't really help. The only reference I have found to finding the roll centre is a 1959 Practical Motorist article saying it is much too difficult to explain (for their readers?). If you haven't already looked at them, try to find copies of Motor Repair and Overhauling as published by George Newnes in the 40s and 50s, or a similar series by other publishers. They turn up in autojumbles from time to time. I have one set which includes a data sheet for the 1946-48 30hp Allard but only includes toe in info at 3/16 in. Other editions may have more information on the Allard. Alternatively, a hunt round the autojumbles may produce an engineering oriented guide which will be of some use.
Good luck.
David
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Another possibility that might help is to look at home.mweb.co.za/ef/effecta1/rollcent.html for general guidance.
David
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I have forgotten, but when I did know it wasnt that complicated.
The trouble is that with pure(?)swing axles it migrates according to the camber of the wheels.I imagine it must migrate upwards as the camber becomes more positive..
If you can keep the camber from going positive on the front wheels it will never bother you,but half an inch of suspension travel might!
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