Then, to finish off, air blast to get the bulk of the water.  Finish with a litre or so of methylated spirits to absorb what remains . . .

Awesome, now have a bit of a process for doing this :)
Would love to look at getting a plastic race tank made up for the AW11....

G'day Knightrous,
 
I used molasses and hot water to clean the tank of my blue adub, which was horribly rusty. I let it sit for about a week and then rinsed out, swished around some metho etc. Did a pretty good job too, just depends on how bad your tank is to begin with. After seeing the blue one, I pulled the tank from my white one, which thankfully was completely clean.

With all the rain stopping me from working in the drive way, I've kicked on with another project in the garage.
I'm having a crack at building my own Laminova oil cooler.

To buy one of these you pay anywhere between $400 - 600.
I've bought a couple of 394mm cores for $70ea a while back to play with intercooler ideas, but decided to give one of these a shot as an oil cooler. This kicked in when I blew an oil cooler hose on the TrackDub and decided it was time I installed my thermostatic oil cooler sandwich plate.
 
I bought some tubing to suit the core.

 
Picked up some AN fittings and braided oil hose (<$100, $48 being purely for the 2M of hose!)

 
Machined down the AN male to male fitting to use as weld in fittings.

 
Fittings connected to my thermostatic oil cooler sandwich plate, which also has a digital 0-150psi pressure sender fitted.

 
Cut the tubing to length and tested the clearance of the core (they have to be within 0.5mm)

 
Drilled a series of 10mm holes that will allow the oil to flow from the oil gallery (coming soon) to flow into the core

 
Bought some 25x25x3 aluminium channel to make the oil galleries with.

 
Machined up an end cap that will be welded to the tubing. This has only been roughed out and will be machined down shortly to match the radiator hoses.

 
The oil gallery has the end tapered to allow the AN fittings to be welded in at an angle, allowing the fittings and oil hoses to clear the radiator hoses.

 
And that's all I've done so far, hopefully I can have it finished next week and in the car for some testing.

Interested in seeing how this goes. your ideas are abit out there but are good ones.

those coolers have an oring on them to protect the core from vibrating to death, I have one handy if you need any pictures of one.

O-ring is in the planning, need it to seal the oil from the water channels anyway :)
 

Er I actually have one of these sitting in my shed doing sweet FA I could've sold you for less than 400-600...  BTW from my experience with it, your not going to need a thermostat but think mine was ~300mm so your about 30% larger.

5SGTE
Er I actually have one of these sitting in my shed doing sweet FA I could've sold you for less than 400-600...  BTW from my experience with it, your not going to need a thermostat but think mine was ~300mm so your about 30% larger.

Just buying one wouldn't be any fun and certainly wouldn't make me utilize the tools I have. Why buy fish if you live on a trawler! :D
 
I've gone the thermostatic plate for two reasons.
 
1. The stock AW11 oil cooler is a by pass cooler. This basically bypasses excess oil pressure into the oil cooler before delivering it back into the sump. Effectively it's not actively cooling the oil entering the block.
2. Another AW11 owner installed the a laminova based oil cooler into his car and found that it was working too effective and the oil temps were only just getting to required temps.
 
So I happened to come across the thermostatic plates cheap on Ebay ($110!) and grabbed a pair in a flash.
 
Anyway, another session on the lathe.
 
Turned down the water inlet to 36mm, will turn it down further once I double check the size of the radiator hoses (34mm..?)

 
Then I turned the inside steps to suit. The first step is where the inlet presses over/up against the tubing, the 2nd step is where the O-ring will go, this is still to be machined to final size (~39.5mm). The third step is where the core inlet butts against and the final one all the way down the bottom is only there because my live center is only 20mm in diameter and if I bore it out, I wouldn't be able to recenter the job in the lathe again.

 
Everything press fits with just a gentle love tap of the knockometer.

 
And the core sits flush at the other end!

 
 
Now back to another project, I dropped my C60 gearbox in today to the local mechanic to pull the 5th & 6th gear clusters apart due to my gear puller being weak sissy fail! When that comes back, I can finally finish off my 6 speed gearbox + LSD project!

Other said AW11 owner also had his installed on the cold side on the cooling system where the transmission cooler once lived, and to my knowledge was not using any sort of thermostatic sandwich plate (which he has since acquired).
 
Regardless of which side of the bay it gets installed on though, if cooling is effective enough it goes to show thermostatic is definitely the way to go, even if it's only closed for a small period whilst the engine is still warming up.