March 1974 - Gordon Allen: The Crankshaft Man of Slough (Motorsport Magazine)
"Gordon Allen is something of an engineering adventurer. His various achievements over the years in the pursuit of engineering enjoyment and motor sport pleasure include designing and constructing a two-cylinder, twin-overhead camshaft racing motorcycle engine, constructing upon Mini gearboxes two four-cylinder, 1.5-litre alloy block engines fitted with adapted Jaguar twin-cam cylinder heads and placing one in each end of a racing Mini, making his own eight-port alloy cylinder head for a Mini complete with his own fuel-injection arrangement and now his latest trick is to adapt a Ford-BDA cylinder head to his own designed arid manufactured block and crankshaft assembly to create a 16-valve, five-bearing, dry-sumped, racing Mini engine. Several Allen BDA-engined Minis are racing successfully, including that of Peter Kitchen, in which Allen has an interest and which I was fortunate enough to try at Silverstone last year (but that's another story).
However, constructing engines is really a hobby for Allen, who runs Allen Tool and Engineering Ltd., from Slough Trading Estate (Slough 23782). It is a hobby which led him by chance into the manufacture of crankshafts and his small engineering works is becoming widely known in competition circles for the quality of his nitrided steel crankshafts machined from solid billets. Many leading engine builders use his crankshafts in Formula Two, Three and Atlantic Ford BDA engines, but his manufacturing capabilities spread far beyond these modern racing realms into vintage and historic crankshaft manufacture. He can make any crankshaft so long as it is not too big for his machines and provided a drawing or preferably an actual example (even broken) of the crank required is available.
More here:-
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/a...3/gordon-allen