Allen Crankshafts

Sir,

Referring to the above, your correspondent Mr. F. J. E. Aylott writes—”it is only in recent years that certain types of cast iron have been used for crankshaft quantity production”—and then goes on to explain just why this is now possible.

Unless my memory is seriously at fault Ford used a cast-iron crankshaft when they introduced their 3.6-litre s.v. V8 engine in 1932, something over 40 years ago, and continued to do so right up to the end of production some 20-or-so years later.

Hundreds of thousands of these power units were, of course, used very successfully in a variety of service vehicles during the war, and they were continued after the war in the Ford Pilot, apart from powering most of the American “hot rods” in the late ’40s and early ’50s, machines which would cover the standing quarter in (from memory) around 10-11 sec.

The design of this particular V8 crankshaft was rather complicated, and I do not think that in any case it would have been possible to produce it by forging. Failure of the shaft was, I believe, very rare indeed, which must say quite a lot for their technique.

Bridlington A. C. Savile