[DeTomaso] Speedometer Repair Options?

[The DeTomaso Registry Guy]

Every long established business, even those with golden reputations can make mistakes.

PA Speedo is included.  

We were recently working on a vintage Jaguar, the (mechanical coolant) temp gauge was problematic, 
and off it went to PA Speedo for fix/calibration.

When returned and installed, we found that it was not accurate.  We communicated with PA Speedo
are were told they tested it, fixed it, re-calibrated it, tested it, then shipped back to us.

Shop time spent (~ $150/hour) diagnosing this old/new failure.

We spent some time with the sensor in a bucket of hot water, next to both a digital thermometer 
(highly accurate) and another mechanical gauge.  The results did not compare to what PA Speedo
stated.  We called them and verified what repairs they made, and how they verified the results.
We just could not repeat their findings. (Broken again or still broken ?)  Back it went.

More shop time spent.  The car owner (a 'space' engineer) fully documented activities.
After another round of calls to PA Speedo, and more shop time spent, we finally learned that
what we were previously told by PA Speedo was um.... not correct.  

OK blunt statement here... They lied to us about their testing.  
They didn't test it, which they now 'sort of' admit.  Rather odd reply actually.
So another round of pull it out and send to them, to wait for re-delivery.

Begin another round of test, adjust, validate, re-install, final test in car...

The final result is that the gauge is much less accurate in the low, warm-up zone of the scale
(below 50+ C) and seems to only be accurate near 80-100 C.

So even famous landmark businesses can fail their customers.  
In this case lying about test results, which caused hours of shop time, is just not OK,
and is not acceptable, and worse that a bad repair.

This seemed more than accidental miss-communication, or sloppy work, but intentional deceit.
So the individual responsible should be fired.

I do not know what PA Speedo did internally, but their reputation was quite tarnished in our view.

Chuck


Jim,

Yeah it's really amazing. They are in a beautiful old building, a car workshop with an arched curved wooden roof with exposed beams
and skylights, right in the middle of downtown Palo Alto. It's like walking into a time machine. 

They have a jillion parts from every kind of gauge you can imagine. 



Mike