Not all is perfect of course. I wasn’t impressed with the heat for my feet. One day I took apart some of the console, and found out that some of the cables for the heater and direct/deflected were a few mm out of adjustment. Correcting that made a big difference.
Fueling the car is getting more expensive, even though I managed 15.5 mpg last time. Prices are up, hopefully democracy in Africa soon will lower them. In Denmark, most places can’t handle more than DKK999 ($200), so when I fill up the two fuel tanks, I have to use my card twice. When I complain to the clerk that they should remove that limit, he says, quite a big fuel tank you must have, then I say no, I have two. Then he looks at me as if I’m from another planet. Planet DeTomaso perhaps?
The A/C was suddenly in demand. But it didn’t work at all, and I have a new shaker and it was filled 2 years ago and was the difference between a great and a tough trip to Modena 50 back then. So was it leaking? I could hear my thermostat click, but when checking the compressor, it didn’t engage the clutch. Must be wiring. And yes, a connector under the battery tray was dirty, taking it apart and cleaning it, and the A/C worked.
I have the standard 333-180 thermostat, but now the engine doesn’t fully heat up. A new thermostat would be the obvious remedy, but this is the third time I change then. Works perfectly for many months, and then doesn’t heat up properly. It’s a Summit sourced flowkooler, are there any other brands of higher quality available?
One morning in the rain the left wiper blade fell of the car. I quickly stopped the wiper not to scratch the windshield, and drove back to find it. It had been run over. I could move the right blade to the left arm, and remove the right wiper arm, and drive to work on one wiper. The reason was that the standard connector wasn’t really right. I looked through my box of connectors, found a “H2” marked connector that fits perfectly. So back to two wipers.
Yesterday driving home there was a queue on the freeway. My idle was terrible. When you're the author of www.tuningmadeeasy.com a decent idle is a matter of pride, anything else is embarrassing
. And when I wanted less heat, that cable broke. So this morning was spent fixing that and washing the car.Am I getting tired of it? No, not at all. Slightly fewer problems, still the same joy, I’m driving instead of just commuting. With better weather it’s also less wear on the car. I do get a lot of attention from other drivers. Especially a group of classic Fiat 500s, they almost fell out their windows. And when I fuel it, two tanks, people come up and talk to me, nice, but not if you’re in a hurry. But I try to take the time to be a DeTomaso ambassador. MPG is a challenge and prices are increasing, but the SPG (Smiles Per Gallon
) is still better than most cars on the road. And setting of car alarms twice is worth it all.