Rebuilding an Ardun OHV 1954 - 1956

[52Allard]

I own a 1952 Allard which was the only car to be produced from the factory with an Ardun conversion Ford flathead. In the early '50s Zora Arkus-Duntov (later considered the father of the Corvette) worked for Sidney Allard at the Allard moror car company as a driver and engineer when Allard realized he needed more horsepower to keep his vehicles competitive. So for a short period of time in the early '50s between the time the Allards equipped with Ford 85 to 100 hp flatheads lost their appeal and before bigger American overhead-valve V8s (Cadillac 331), Allard used the Ardun Ford conversion for some of their vehicles. Although the Ardun engine in my car is long gone, I do have some of the correspondence between the original owner of my car (James Sisler) and all sorts of big-name hot rod guys on the west coast in the quest to rebuild his Ardun after it had troubles early in his ownership. This first post is the letter from James Sisler to Zora Duntov after Duntov started working at Chevrolet. Duntov was kind enough to answer Sisler.

(I retyped the original letters for easy reading because they didn't scan well and were hard to read since one letter was a bunch of questions and the other was a bunch of answers)

I have more letters - let me know if they are interesting and I will post more.