[DeTomaso] "Throwaway Cars" tale
Sean Korb
spkorb at gmail.com
Sun Jun 16 10:05:31 EDT 2013
If there is a real market for this I'm going to quit my job and set up
shop. It might not keep with the value of the car but I can build a
standalone Megasquirt III and the parts and dyno shop time would be about
$3000. I can spend the rest of the $20,000 fee to line my pockets. I
would only have to do 1 a month to make it worth my time.
But the other bits... wow. As soon as I made a customer happy with their
EFI some other part would go wonky and they'd come back to me to find out
what to do about it. Every piece of that car is practically a custom part
and I'd have to be outfitted with a foundry, a 3-D printer and a machine
shop. While that sounds pretty awesome it's also really complicated.
Blegh. It's easier to just council them to buy a Pantera :)
sean
On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Boyd Casey <boyd411 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't find it hard to believe that a Lamborghini dealer can fix the ECU
> of a Diabblo, in fact I thought it was hard to believe that in this day and
> age with people making custom chips to over come performance limitations
> built in by the manufacturers and all the tuners thart work on electronic
> efi. The part I refuse to believe is that you can get anything done at a
> Lamborghini shop for a few hundred bucks! Come on, who are you trying to
> kid?
> Boyd
>
> On Saturday, June 15, 2013, LS wrote:
>
> > Detomasos don't handle.
> >
> > Ferraris are twitchy.
> >
> > Diablo computers die.
> >
> > I love the internet!
> >
> > A good Lambo shop can rebuild a computer for a few hundred $$$ *IF* they
> > fail.
> >
> > It doesn't happen that often.
> >
> > LS
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > central
> > wines-spirits est 1934
> >
> >
> > 625 e street nw
> >
> > washington, dc 20004
> >
> > centralwines.com
> >
> >
> > facebook.com/CentralLiquors
> >
> >
> > 202-737-2800
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: Charles Engles <cengles at cox.net <javascript:;>>
> > To: "'Himes, Terry (397C)'" <terry.himes at jpl.nasa.gov <javascript:;>>;
> > detomaso at poca.com <javascript:;>
> > Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:42 PM
> > Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] "Throwaway Cars" tale
> >
> >
> > Dear Terry,
> >
> >
> >
> > ...and from what I can tell there should be a goodly
> > supply of dead and malfunctioning Diablo main engine computers for you to
> > experiment on in order to help them keep their Diablos on the road.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Warmest regards, Chuck Engles
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Himes, Terry (397C) [mailto:terry.himes at jpl.nasa.gov]
> > Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2013 4:17 PM
> > To: Charles Engles; detomaso at poca.com
> > Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] "Throwaway Cars" tale
> >
> >
> >
> > Hmmm? Gets me thinking that about part-time career opportunity.
> > Something
> > that might fund the next
> >
> > Pantera upgrade I've been wanting. New brakes. Hmmm? Lambo owers ==
> > $$$.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Terry W. Himes
> >
> > JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> >
> > Deep Impact Sequence Team Lead
> >
> > Deep Impact Spacecraft Engineer
> >
> > Phone: (818) 393-6261
> >
> > Cell: (818) 653-8213
> >
> > Fax: (818) 393-3147
> >
> > thimes at jpl.nasa.gov
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Charles Engles <cengles at cox.net>
> > Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 15:31:58 -0500
> > To: <detomaso at poca.com>
> > Subject: [DeTomaso] "Throwaway Cars" tale
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear Forum,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > A true story follows.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > A friend of mine owns a Lamborghini Diablo. He has
> owned
> >
> > it for several years and was driving it on a backroad when it lost power.
> >
> > He came home on a roll back. He thought it was a bad oxygen sensor.
> >
> > Further home diagnostics seem to show that it is the main engine computer
> >
> > and that accounts half of the V12 cylinders missing in action.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > When that diagnosis came up, he thought, "This is bad."
> A
> >
> > call to our nearest Lambo dealer and service center in Dallas-Ft. Worth
> > gave
> >
> > him an unpleasant earful. It seems that they have a Diablo with the same
> >
> > problem. It has been in their shop for *several* months. They have
> >
> > plugged three new computers into it and untold man-hours and still
> haven't
> >
> > solved the problem. They were able to obtain the few remaining factory
> > NOS
> >
> > engine computers. Lambo does not make them any more. It appears that
> >
> > there is no source for a new Diablo engine computer.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Further research showed that there are apparently two
> guys
> >
> > in the U.S. with the ability to understand the computer circuitry and
> code
> >
> > who can actually work on a sick computer rather than just replace it.
> One
> >
> > fellow is in Ohio and the other is on the West Coast. He'll have to put
> >
> > the Diablo on a transport and send it to one of them and hope they can
> fix
> >
> > it.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The plan that occurred to me: pull the offending and
> >
> > uncooperative Diablo computer and install something more user
> > friendly---has
> >
> > already been done by other Diablo owners. Some have converted to a Motec
> >
> > system that is supposed to cost about $20k..!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > After the onset of this major headache, he said that he
> was
> >
> > reminded of something that Bob Smith ( www.bobsmithcoachworks.com )
> said
> >
> > years ago when we were touring his fabulous Ferrari and Exotic
> Restoration
> >
> > Shop in Texas. Someone in the group asked about newer Ferraris and
> sports
> >
> > cars in the post carburetor era.
> _______________________________________________
>
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--
Sean Korb spkorb at spkorb.org http://www.spkorb.org
'65,'68 Mustangs,'68 Cougar,'78 R100/7,'60 Metro,'59 A35,'71 Pantera #1382
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you get" --Miller
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -P. Picasso
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