1969 Ford Falcon Pricing and Specs

All the information I can find on this car suggests that the towing limit (with a braked trailer) is 1600kg, not 2000kg as suggested by your source. At which point, you'd need to be pretty careful you didn't inadvertently overload the car by adding a toolbox or other gear to the trailer.

The Mondeo is not really the ideal vehicle for towing heavy loads as it's front-drive layout means it doesn't have the traction a rear-drive car does when towing. A slippery boat ramp, for instance, might pose no problem for a rear-drive car, while forcing a front-drive car trying to haul a boat out of the water to struggle with wheelspin.

That said, the turbo-diesel engine in the Mondeo is a strong, torquey thing, so provided you don't stray on to slippery or loose surfaces, the Mondeo should be able to do the job. Again, though, your 1500kg projected load is almost at the car's legal limit.

It's not just transmissions that cop a hiding when towing, either. Just about everything on the car from the brakes to the cooling system will wear faster when subjected to the extra strain of towing a big load.

Oil manufacturers recommend a 10W-50 semi-synthetic oil for this engine. But not just any 10W-50. Crucially, the oil needs to be formulated specifically for LPG engines which have different combustion by-products and, therefore, require a different additive package in their oil compared with a car running on petrol or diesel.

Your car has covered quite a distance, but modern metallurgy and engine design suggests that 330,000km is not too many kilometres these days, and the engine could have plenty left to give. If it's starting to use a little oil between services, you could consider going to a slightly thicker grade of oil to compensate, but make sure it's still specifically formulated for an engine running on LPG.

The reason the car overheats under load or when travelling uphill is simply because it's defying gravity and, therefore, doing more work in those circumstances. Think of it as a person using a staircase. They'll go down the stairs easily, but they'll sweat more going up them, and more again going up the stairs with a suitcase under each arm. In a car's engine, hauling a load or driving uphill requires more throttle which, in turn, injects more fuel into the cylinders. And more fuel burned equals more heat. It's as simple as that.

If you've replaced the radiator, water pump and thermostat, you've started logically enough, but simply replacing bits and pieces is not the way to proceed as you've already discovered by replacing parts that were probably good (and didn't fix the problem). You could have a collapsed radiator hose (Were these replaced, too?) or a problem with the fuel-air ratio which can make a car run hot when it's under duress. The steering column sounds unrelated, but if the wiring to the dashboard was damaged during this process, it's possible that the temperature gauge is reading incorrectly and the engine may not be running hot at all. An electronic scan will be able to check the actual running temperature as well as uncovering any fault codes the computer has logged.

Don't rule out things like a build up of debris inside the cooling passages in the engine that could be blocking the flow of coolant. And a check of the radiator overflow bottle is a good idea. These have been known to perish and crack on Falcons, allowing some coolant to escape, leaving you with a low radiator level when you need it most.