Autopendium :: stuff about old cars

Tags: brakes engine gearbox overdrive rebuild ruddspeed

It's been a long wait for the Amazon to come back from the shapers, where it's being prepared for painting, but it looks as if it will be back this week, and then there's probably about 3-4 weeks of painting.

In the meantime, Lance and Mark at Romance of Rust have been sorting out some of the other bits, principally the engine, brakes and gearbox.

The engine was relatively straightforward, now that we've got the reciprocating assembly balanced (see Balancing the Amazon's engine), and it's now looking great in matt black, particularly with the polished carbs (twin SUs). I've failed to find a set of good rocker arms, and although Vintage Performance Developments in the States do a set of very sexy high-lift roller rockers, we're going to skip that this time and get the existing ones reground and hardened.

We've also now got an overdrive gearbox, which was rescued from a donor car that Lance bought. It's in good condition and just needed some bearings and seals. Interestingly, the donor car also had a very nice Ruddspeed engine, which Lance ebay'd (and which went for a pitifully low figure, given how good an engine it was).

Rebuilding the brakes should have been fairly straightforward, except that the kit that Amazon Cars supplies doesn't include the O-rings. This caused a bit of a problem until we discovered that the calipers are the same Girling ones used on E-Type Jags.

Once we found that out it was fairly easy to get a new set from a local brake and clutch parts shop (you can also apparently get complete sets, with O-rings from Jag parts specialists).

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