International AR-110 Ute

shouldn't look out of place parked in Swishies driveway

Graham, That wouldn't look out of place in anybodies Driveway..

LOL

Bring it on ...................... over

LOL


L@@kn the goodz

well dun

cya

Thanks Fellas

Great job.. Have followed with interest.. great story.. Thankyou for sharing..

AR-110 Update
A bit of a ramble about some overheating problems I have had with my Inter.

My AR-110 stayed hot for a long time after shutdown and started to lose coolant with no apparent signs of where the leak was. You could not hear any coolant leaking and there were no tell tale drips on the floor but the passenger side chassis rail would end up with drops of coolant sometime after engine shutdown. On closer examination, a blinding obvious design flaw of mine was apparent - the top of my custom radiator was 50mm lower than the thermostat top hose outlet and as such, the engine was never completely full of coolant. The engine temp was a steady 84 degrees when running and all was well until the engine was shut down where it continued to heat up because there was no convection flow of coolant through the engine as the coolant cooled. I discovered this when I decided to flush the engine to see if there was any blockage. After refilling and running with new coolant I checked everything and found signs of coolant seepage on both ends of the radiator core some 15 minutes after shutdown. The coolant was seeping through where the core tubes are soldered to the tank and this was only after the system had built up extra pressure as it heated up after shutdown.

I took the radiator back to the manufacturer for a pressure test and their initial visual examination didn't show any leaks. Some two weeks later after several phone calls the radiator mob finally pressure tested the radiator and acknowledged that the core was leaking at three locations on both tanks. They said that this was unusual and suggested that the radiator must have been twisted for this to happen! This is not the case because the radiator was rubber mounted for vibration and electrolysis purposes and was definitely not under any mechanical torsion or twist. Unfortunately because the radiator was now three years old, warranty is not forthcoming even though the radiator has seen less than 12 months service....so in summary, my design error has resulted in a $1400 radiator being a piece of aluminium scrap.

So how to fix the problem - I looked at lots of radiators from different cars and finally settled on a XW GT Falcon radiator that had a similar surface area to my custom radiator and was taller than the top radiator hose outlet on my engine. Mounting this radiator meant that I had to bring the radiator closer to the engine to clear the inside of the bonnet and this resulted in insufficient room for electric thermo fans to be fitted. I had enough space to fit the original mechanical clutch fan and after making some simple brackets the radiator was installed. Funny how making simple brackets can take up a whole day by the time you work out how to do it and fit rubber isolation etc. Finding suitable radiator hoses was tricky - I ended up using a Mazda top hose with 50mm cut off one end and for the lower hose, I used a 60 series Landcruiser bottom hose shortened by 120mm .

So the end result is I now have the GT Falcon radiator fitted with no shroud (at the moment) and the air flow through the radiator at idle is pretty good.

I did some freeway and stop start traffic driving on the weekend when the ambient temperature was 35 degrees; the temperature gauge displayed a steady 84 degrees at 110km/h and when stopped at traffic lights, the temperature rose to 88 degrees with A/C on all of the time. I am happy with these readings and after shutdown the engine cools down in half the time it took before, so fingers crossed, everything will now be good.

Note: The engine is noticeably quieter without the electric thermo fans running...and I used to think clutch fans were noisy.

A couple of photos below to show the revised radiator.

Ford GT Radiator

Did the usual water in the oil check, cylinder compression test etc and everything was normal. I have also disconnected the heater because it was the highest point in the cooling system and they are really not needed in WA

This mornings job was to remove my home made airbox and install a pod filter. This also allowed me to fit the factory engine covers since the airbox was no longer in the way.

Factory engine covers fitted and pod filter in situ

Stainless bracket I made to support the stainless bend with the pod filter hanging off the end

Engine bay view

If nothing else, this shows that you are using your Inter. Great to see that you've nutted this one out and been able to resolve it. It's a shame there's no handy place to bleed the air from the cooling system; there are many cars which have since they have low radiators. Renault 16's come immediately to mind, with two air bleeds. I'm told EA and similar Falcons also have this and had huge problems along the lines you experienced due to mechanics not knowing this. (ISTBC)

Thanks for posting this; I expect it will be useful to others in the future.

Many happy miles, Jarrod.

Grahamjb

Love your work! That old girl certainly came up well. Your post on the cooling problems will certainly be read with interest by others who have had similar problems.

Just as an aside, I had similar problems stuffing a 240/300 inline Ford six into a postal jeep. After springing for a custom radiator found that an old trick worked wonders, got the idea from AMC Ramblers, Ran a 5/16th inch by pass hose from the top radiator tank to the thermostat housing. No more air locks, cured her!

Best of luck with your jigger, Cheers
Dave_64

Thanks for the comments Dave, Jarrod.
The ute is great to drive and is on full rego - no point in not enjoying the joys of driving one of these beauties which I must say is very nice with the power steering and soft ride from the Jag suspension.

The only thing left to sort out is the annoying wind noise coming in past the door rubbers that don't do a very good job. I am thinking of using air filled door rubber seals like they use in modern cars to solve the problem. I get around it at the moment by winding the window down a smidge and most of the wind noise disappears.

Cheers

Graham,
That is certainly a TOP job ....you should be proud of your self.
there is just no way I would attempt to do something like that.
....................Billy....................

Tonneau Cover
I have decided to fit a tonneau cover to the AR-110 which means I have to replace the SS loops that I made and replace them with SS Hooks to make the tonneau cover elastic straps easy to fit and undo. The original hooks that were fitted to the AR-110 were steel and I since I don't have enough of them, I decided to replace them with SS ones.

Original hook

Cut up some lengths of 5mm X 20mm SST flat bar and mark them out

Cut out the rough shape

Make up a form that I can bend the hooks over using the vice and a hammer

The finished hooks ready to be fitted

Made a dodgy Rivnut installation tool comprising 1 x 6mm bolt, a 6mm nut and three washers

Marked out where to put the Rivnuts on the tailgate and ground down the paint so the Rivnut pulls up against metal - the photo below shows how to install Rivnut using the dodgy tool

Hooks fitted