Practically Classics Forum

JPB wrote:If you should decide to slam the car, I know of the whereabouts of 4 modified displacers with the Schrader valve mod to allow the Nitrogen pressure to be fiddled with. They've only done a couple of thousand miles and were previously split, fitted with uprated (non-latex) diaphragms, those valves fitted to their gas chambers and their internal damping upgraded by doubling up on the reeds.

The fella's looking for a very reasonable price for these as his own Allegro (allegedly the "London-proof" DLT-owned one) is being restored in closer to stock clip, including removal of DLT's gun turret. It will be receiving a standard set of bottles with non-adjustable gas chambers.

more details please mate

They fit in the place of standard bottles, but the mod to the gas chamber allows the Nitrogen to be repressurised and the ride height to be set accordingly (and independently) without compromising the fluid pressure as some folk do when they try to lower a Hydrasag car by simply letting fluid out. The uprated damping works really well. Geoff, whose own roadworthy cars (a late, Hydrasag-suspended Maxi HLS and a miniMETRO that's modified to use the interconnected setup from a later Rover 100 series car) run the modded bottles has driven the Maxi over a series of severe speed humps at well over the speed any sane person would attack such things at and it rode like a Citroen GS, such was its amazing composure under test. He does seem to replace butterfly bushes frequently though!

He often pops in to my work to take the odd session or two when our comms studies tutor is skiving, sorry - off sick - and I can easily enough put to him any further questions you'd like to ask regarding these and any other Hydrolastic or Hydrasag-related questions.

I don't get why he's going for the o/e suspension on the London Proof Allegro, it's not as though there's much else stock about it but that's the plan all the same.

Splendid stuff. Dad had a N Plate 2 door 1300 Super in Rheingold metallic (very rare colour), owned it for approx 20 years and never welded. Neither did it never get him home (even when the displacers burst on one side!

I bet your fusebox has fallen inside the bulkhead?

Please don't slam it though eh?

could you get me a price for them just incase i do go down that route?

someone on another forum has rightly pointed out that it is not studley castle in the press photo!
after half an hour or so searching google images i have discovered it is in fact delhouise castle in Edinburgh!

and no the fusebox was intact and sitting like new in the bulkhead before i removed it. is that a common thing to have happened?

giz wrote:and no the fusebox was intact and sitting like new in the bulkhead before i removed it. is that a common thing to have happened?

I believe so, when we used to go to the scrapyard for bits, we used to have a little bet...would the fuse box be intact? Then we would pop the bonnets and look, whoever said it would still be intact was the winner!

Happy days.

No horses on the IoW then Alan?
Mind I've room to talk; around these parts, we bet on the outcome of an attempt by two similarly sized pensioners to cross the street on sheet ice in winter.

could you get me a price for them just in case i do go down that route?

I'll ask Geoff next time we speak. Better yet, I'll ring and make a point of asking.

Fitting vastly superior bottles doesn't mean that you'd have to lower the thing though, but it does mean that you can without risking simultaneous and spectacular diaphragm failure. If this were a steel-sprung BL product, you'd possibly be stoned to death by originality fundamentalists for lowering it, but as the change doesn't have to be permanent on a Hydro motor, you'll get away with it, only the valves on the front bottles' gas chambers will give the game away from a quick glance into the engine bay.

That's an image borrowed from another Maxi-owning friend of mine, but obviously the idea's the same for Allegro ones.

JPB wrote:If this were a steel-sprung BL product, you'd possibly be stoned to death by originality fundamentalists for lowering it

Or alternatively just shout JEHOVAH a few times

Yes but what hydrogas the Romans ever done for us?

7 hours work over 2 nights and the front end is now as stripped as i want it to be for now, the only things left that will be removed at a later date are suspension and steering components.





i also had a poke at the windscreen/scuttle area and it looks like that needs attention too!



the next job is too empty the car into boxes and then start stripping out the rear interior, lights, bumper and push the rear side windows out. i'm going to have to replace the seals in both rear windows as they have rotted at the bottoms, does anyone know where i can get some new ones from?