All, I'm happy this forum grows, and it's the best for DeTomaso owners out there, and thanks George for making it possible. If I have a technical problem or need a rare part, this is the place I go. And I've enjoyed writing about my DeTomaso trips.
I have only one wish. When people, often younger newer owners, ask for technical advice, I don't think we help them very well. I think we provide many answers, for sure, everybody's willing to chime in, which is of course good. But the quality of the answers could be higher. I know, you might think, who the h... is this No Quarter judging the quality of other people's advice? But those of us that's been on this forum for some years, I'm sure we've all seen threads where a simple question with an in all likelihood simple answer, that thread then goes bananas with suggestions, "it worked for me", “Grumpy Jenkins did this and this", “a Pantera can’t stay cool, unless you…”. And sometimes, the answer is simply not an answer to the posed question! It's as if some here on the forum just simply want to chime in, be heard, rather than actually help the one starting the thread. Some threads like this go over several days. And it's often obvious that a late answer is given by someone that either hadn't read or had forgotten the initial question. So the guy with the problem, he gets answers to other questions than the one he asked. That's problem number one IMO. Problem number two is that many of us work on our cars ourselves, and we're quite old, so we actually have had a lot of experience. Good. So we've seen it all, tried it all. But for some reason many posts the most difficult and cumbersome (and maybe least likely) solution to a problem, but we should instead give the guy the easiest and most likely solutions first.
An example is the current thread by Tim H, a simple cooling problem on a Pantera that earlier had no cooling issues. OK, so it's not a design fault, it cooled fine earlier, it's a new sudden and now consistent fault. So in all likelihood, it's a faulty fan/a fuse/a hose that developed a small pressure leak/faulty water pump/stuck thermostat/radiator cap gone bad. But some then try to rewire his electrics, soldering on his radiator etc. All these solutions will probably make his car better, but that was not his problem, his problem was, what could have happened so a car that was able to stay cool on a dozen trips this summer suddenly spews coolant every trip. Read and answer his question...
So in short, I think we should try harder to actually answer the question posed. If you can't remember the question, read it before you answer. And then only answer the question, don't write an essay about a (maybe) similar problem that you had that you solved by doing S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and Z.
This would IMO improve our forum considerably.
