Liquid
Intelligence 115 High Temperature Waterless Coolant
* No
Boiling up to 190°C *No
Cooling System Pressure *No
Catalyst for Corrosion
Liquid Intelligence has formed alliances with research
laboratories and academic institutions to develop an innovative
and very functional anti-freeze anti-boil. This exceptional
product offers significant advantages over all traditional
ethylene and propylene glycol coolants.
Within
all healthy cooling systems Nucleate Boiling is a normal occurrence. Nucleate
boiling takes place when coolant is in direct contact with the hot metal of the
engine block or cylinder heads.
As
the thin film of coolant turns to Nucleate Boiling on the hot metal surfaces of
the cooling system, the layer of vapour bubbles being formed breakaway from the
surface and are immediately replaced by cooler fluids. This heat quenching
process repeats continuously whilst the engine is operating at its normal
running temperature. Large amounts of heat are absorbed from the hot metal
surfaces by this process, thus maintaining the engines correct thermal
parameters.
When the
coolant is operating continually above boiling point the nucleate boiling
process is reduced or stoped, the coolant itself becomes continuously displaced
from the metal surface by a layer of vapour called a "vapour blanket”.
When vapour blanketing occurs, the metal surface becomes insulated from the
surrounding liquid coolant, thus elevating the engine temperature
significantly. The cooling system's intended pressure is exceeded allowing coolant
boil-over.
The loss
of Nucleate Boiling can be a common problem with conventional coolants when a
vintage vehicle is moving at low speeds or idling in traffic or else operating
in high ambient temperatures.
The
unique synthetic waterless formulation of Liquid Intelligence 115 coolant can
function at much higher coefficient of thermal conductivity heat transfer when
compared to traditional water/glycol coolants. The enhanced density and thermal
stability of this coolant can maintain a continuous uninterrupted process of
heat quenching the cooling system even under the most demanding running
conditions.
For
Product and Application Information Chat with our Technical Support
Available
from 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday.
Toll free
0800-46-33-46
Liquidintelligence 115 (NZ)
Ltd.
Street address
38 Egmont St,
Kaponga, 4642. Taranaki,
New Zealand.
Roy King is a specialist in rebuilding rare and valuable vintage cars, as well as being the New Zealand distributor for Liquid Intelligence 115.
If you would like know a little more about Roy, take a moment to read this article from the New Zealand Classic Car Magazine; Roy King the Restoration King.
The sleepy little town of Kaponga, on the slopes of Mount Taranaki,
is not where you expect to find a specialist in rebuilding rare and
valuable vintage cars.
Kaponga is like that. For years the Kaponga Backgammon Club brought
some of the world’s top blues musicians to their clubrooms in a block
of derelict shops, and it wasn’t uncommon for overseas artists to ask
if they could play at the Club.
Roy King is even more of a Kaponga institution. Although you may not
have heard of him, Roy has been in the restoration business for many
years and has never advertised. Work arrives by word of mouth and, like
the musicians at the Backgammon Club, a lot of it comes from overseas.
Kaponga may be an out of the way place to find world class restoration
skills, but it’s Roy’s home, and people who need his skills have no
trouble finding him.
Roy almost never restores a complete car. His latest project being
the major refurbishment of a 1924 Fiat 519 chassis. When I first
visited Roy in late September 2008 his part in the restoration was
nearing completion, and it was soon to be shipped to its Australian
owner. The term ‘major refurbishment’ hardly does justice to Roy’s work
over the last three or so years.
He received a very rough chassis and 54 boxes of scruffy parts. Roy
cleaned and painted the chassis and fully overhauled the engine,
gearbox and differential before starting to make hundreds of
irreplaceable items that were missing. The list of parts he
manufactured was almost endless – fuel lines, wiring, wiring
connectors, two splined rear hubs, four knockoff hub caps, brackets, 40
grease nipples, a car lot of nuts and bolts, including 106 dome nuts.
All six of the Fiat’s unique spark plug
caps were missing, so Roy had to make new ones, moulding them from
synthetic materials with FIAT cast into the top of each one. Having a
mould made, sourcing the right materials and learning how to mix and
mould them was an exacting process involving a lot of trial and error.
He also machined the two-piece brass terminals that fit inside the caps.
At least he knew what the plug caps should look like. It was his
second Fiat 519 chassis restoration; the first was
for a customer in
Austria. Consequently, Roy is one of the few people who knows what the missing items should look like and where they should be fitted.
Roy couldn’t buy the correct hose clips, so he made them – shaping
the correct gauge wire, machining up the clamps and screws before
having the parts nickel plated. He says there are nearly 1600 nickel
plated parts on a Fiat 519 chassis, and yet it doesn’t look overloaded
with plated parts.
In its day, the 519 was a worthy competitor for Bentley,
Rolls-Royce, Isotta-Fraschini, Hispano-Suiza and others.
Coincidentally, Roy has worked on an Isotta and a Hispano, as well as
three other Fiat 519s, and he has a 1929 Rolls Twenty steering box,
fuel pump and gearbox in his workshop to be overhauled prior to
assembling the chassis.
Sought-After
The obvious question was, how did Roy become a sought after
craftsman on the world stage? When he left school he took up a
mechanic’s apprenticeship at the local garage at Auroa, South Taranaki.
Being a rural garage, working on cars was only a small part of the job.
Roy found himself repairing trucks, tractors and other farm machinery,
and doing general engineering. Whatever work came along, he did it.
Cutting, bending
and welding pipes for new cowsheds in ankle deep mud in the middle of
winter was character building and valuable training.
At 18 years of age, Roy took up motor racing. Formula Vee founder,
Barry Munro, sent him the rules and Roy built a car, even though he
hadn’t actually seen one at the time. It was the fourth one built in
New Zealand and the second to actually race, at the Paritutu circuit in
New Plymouth. That first race was in 1967, on the day Denny Hulme
became world champion. From 36 starts, Roy won 18 races over three
seasons before the world called and he headed off on his OE.
During 1970-72 he spent time in India and drove tour buses
throughout Europe. He began the 1972 tourist season by flying to
Istanbul, where the driver was ill in hospital and his bus had run its
bearings. Roy paid to fly the driver back to England and set about
fitting the new bearings he had brought with him. With the help of a
local mechanic and three 10-12-year-old Pakistani boys who were living
on the bus, Roy removed the huge AEC engine and gearbox from under the
bus, working on the side of the road with ‘a hammer, screwdriver and
bottle jack. He took the crankshaft into Istanbul to be ground before
reassembling the whole thing.
The arrangement with the tour company was that he kept the fares as
wages. Roy filled the bus with paying passengers and arrived back in
London with £300 in his pocket, over half the price of a new Mini at
the time.
Busman’s Holiday
Back in New Zealand, he bought Kaponga’s run down local garage and
built up the business, expanding into tractor and machinery sales. In
1994 he sold all but the old garage and has been operating solo from
there ever since, doing repairs and restoration work.
Nowadays, Roy restricts his paid working time to 40 hours a week,
and a man must have a project in his leisure hours. Not surprisingly,
it’s a busman’s holiday – he’s building a replica of an early 1900s
chain-driven racing car. This ambitious project is beyond the planning
stage. The chassis is at the sandblaster, the engine sits in Roy’s
‘showroom’ and the Thorbensen rear axle/differential that will transfer
the power from the gearbox to the chain sprockets is in his workshop.
The engine is a 7.4-litre unit from a Halley fire engine that served
with the Onehunga Fire Brigade. He found the old fire engine in a hedge
not far from his home, and had to fell some trees to extract it. The
Thorbensen rear axle/differential unit is from a Republic truck. A
Greytown scrap dealer rescued it and passed it on to Ian Ridd of
Richardsons’ truck museum in Invercargill. Roy had to negotiate with
Ian, and it became his in exchange for a donation to the museum.
The unit is a critical to the racer project because it has the 1.8:1
ratio he needs to get the correct gearing for the
chain drive system,
to give the car a top speed of about 160km/hr at 1500rpm. Another lucky find was a pair of hubs with large sprockets mounted on them.
Unique Experience
In earlier times, when his working week was more than 40 hours, Roy
still found time for his own projects. In 1999 he built a pre-1920s
racer-style car from a 1929 Marquette. Roy used a picture of a Mercer
Raceabout to make scale drawings of his car, which he built during a
year’s part time work.
The Marquette has been used frequently. Roy likes to get off the
beaten track and drove the Molesworth road and Danseys Pass among
others during a 5000km South Island tour in the company of two
Bentleys. The car handles these roads with ease.
I had never been in (on?) a car as minimalist as the Marquette, so a
short drive in the country was a unique experience. It was like riding
a motor cycle, with the wind in my hair and no restricting bodywork.
The 3.4 litre, side-valve six has locomotive torque and accelerates
happily from 8km/hr in top (third) gear. Roy said it will travel easily
at 120km/hr but he kept the speed down to 70-80km/hr for our drive.
Foot brakes and two handbrakes stop the car even better than it goes.
Roy offered me a turn behind the wheel but, having watched him
deftly double-declutching his way up and down the gearbox, I made an excuse
and stayed firmly in the passenger’s seat. Travelling the country in
such a car would be a lot of fun, but you wouldn’t want to be the shy
type.
After trying the Marquette, we went for a quick spin in Roy’s Austin
Seven special. He surprised me by saying he didn’t build the car. He
bought it 30 years ago, just because he liked it. He has overhauled the
mechanicals, and added a few little ‘extras’ (the huge radar detector
wouldn’t help the little car’s power to weight ratio!) but otherwise
the Austin is still as he bought it. The stubby little muffler on the
left side makes plenty of noise, but Roy said the standard Austin
engine produces very little power to match. He says it’s the last
vehicle he would sell.
Jack-of-all-Trades
Roy is still involved in motor sport. He’s well known on the North
Island hill climbing circuit, competing in the Chelsea, Ngawhini, Te
Onepu, Pukeora, Kairangi and other events, in the Austin and the
Marquette. He takes pride in always recording the slowest time in the
Austin.
Roy is a jack of all trades, capable of precision machining,
mechanical repairs, electrical work, carpentry, painting and many other
tasks that are vital parts of the restoration business. He says the
downside is that he can’t become a true specialist in any one aspect
and charge accordingly, but he clearly isn’t in this line of work for
the money.
He
is still relatively young, but the inevitable question arises of what
will happen when Roy is no longer with us. There is no-one to pass his
skills on to, and it’s difficult to imagine anyone else settling down
to the difficult and time consuming job of machining six rubber grips
for Fiat 519 priming valves. Not many would want to machine 12 knockoff
hub caps with the Fiat script on each one (he has another two sets to
make for other cars).
Making hose clips or machining nuts and bolts would not appeal to
many people, but Roy had no option, to ensure the car’s details were
correct. This attention to detail will greatly increase the value of
the finished car, and its owner, Tony Ciccheillo of Brisbane, is lucky
he found Roy. Tony had been over to visit several times, and he was
back again at Easter for the first test drive, with his friend and
fellow 519 owner, Jeff Jones.
The car was finished, apart from the brass headlight shells, which
are being repaired by Ivan Cranch in Auckland. Tony couldn’t speak
highly enough of Roy and his abilities. He is sure that no-one else
could have produced the same exceptional result.
After buying the Fiat seven years ago and a restoration of nearly
four years, finally getting behind the wheel on Easter Monday was a big
moment for Tony. The car drove very well apart from a minor fuel
starvation problem that wasn’t evident during static tests. The
original plan had been to fit a landaulet body but Tony has decided to
keep the car in its current state, exactly as it would have been
delivered to the coach builder. However, Jeff noted that, for total authenticity, they would have to find a herring box for the driver to sit on.
Tony feels it would be a shame to cover up the beautiful workmanship
and detailing in the chassis, and I agree. It’s surprising that
something so bare bones and functional can look so beautiful.
Mini Museum
Roy is a collector who can’t resist buying things that might come in
handy one day. Some, like the Halley fire engine, are part of a plan
while others are stored or displayed in his showroom that is more of a
mini-museum. His building is a treasure house. A BSA Winged Wheel, a
Cyclemaster and his daily Solex were among several motorised bicycles.
A penny farthing was leaning against a wall. A Royal Enfield 125, and
Vespa and NZeta scooters, will probably be sold soon. A Ford Model A
awaits conversion to a ‘raceabout’, while a Bradford just waits.
He is also a part-owner of a 1920s Benz (actually a Benz &
Sohne), one of three left. He rebuilt the chassis and running gear from
a heap of scrap and it is now with the other owner to have a body built.
Roy has just completed his own Fiat 509 Roadster. Like the big Fiat,
it started instantly and the engine ran like a clock. He intends to
sell the car to finance the chain drive racer.
Roy
has a truly rare mix of skills and abilities, and he’s thoroughly
likeable into the bargain. Quietly spoken and unassuming, when he says,
I can build anything!” – it’s not a boast, just a simple statement of
fact. If he doesn’t know how to build it, he’ll learn. As he said, “If
it was made in 1924 it can be made today.”
While Roy is happy to talk, he can also listen. He is very
entertaining and you dare not switch off in case you miss something.
He’s an interesting combination of the wisdom that comes with age and
experience mixed with a boyish enthusiasm for life. His fund of
knowledge and stories is vast. An afternoon with Roy passes very
quickly indeed.
Having worked on some of the world’s most revered makes, Roy says
there is one gap in his CV – he has never worked on a Bugatti and would
love to do so. If you have a Bugatti that needs anything from minor
repairs to a total restoration, now might be a good time to contact Roy
King.
