Shock absorber seal replacement (Aurelia but non-original)

[williamcorke]

B20-2517 came with what I think must be a homemade rear telescopic damper conversion. The car was raced in Spain 'in period' and the dampers are made by Record, a company which still exists in France and had a Spanish sister company in the 50s and 60s. The dampers were clearly made/sold in Spain.

They are nice quality units which I've taken apart to find minimal wear.  However the top seals need replacement as the rubber has hardened over the decades, and the ability to keep all your oil in is obviously critical to function.

The original seals are made by Goetze, and have OD of 37mm and ID of 11mm with a garter spring. 7mm is the height. There are two steel washers, top and bottom, bonded with the rubber, to strengthen the part, which locates the central rod. The centre of the part is 4mm higher than the strengthening washer, presumably to provide more locating contact area for the rod.

So far I have contacted Record in France, Simply Bearings and a couple of damper rebuild specialists without any luck. Google didn't help either...

Does anyone here have any bright ideas about where I should look, or know of a company that could remake such a part?

Of course I could buy a pair of Konis or whatever with the same max/min length, but I'm interested to see how the period set-up performs.

[williamcorke]

Update.

Record in France replied (their Directeur Commercial, no less). I was wrong about Record Spain vs. Record France, which were never related companies - see fact sheet below. Record Spain was bought by AL-KO, a German company in the 1990 and still makes shock absorbers.

Very helpfully, they also pointed me in the direction of "Emmetec in Italy which distributes all kinds of internal and external components for any types of shock absorbers.".

I have found a shock absorber top seal with the right dimensions on the Emmetec website, and now need to persuade them to sell me fewer than 10!

[impaw]

Well done!
Nice of them to point you in the right direction 👍

[GG]

Surely two seals to use, and eight for spares will make you the English distributor for seals!

[williamcorke]

Perhaps in a few years I'll be able to sell the spare seals to myself at a profit. You need degree level man maths to do that.