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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.
I have to say that without this forum. very old but new owners like myself would be dead in the water.

Living in the UK and knowing little of the De Tomaso, I was so lucky, Someone mentioned Mike Drew, and then I was told of this forum.
The response has over the 3 or more years been heartwarming, so thank you gentlemen and without the instigator it just wouldn't have happened.

Going to out Classic car show in Birmingham England tomorrow, The DeTomaso drivers club has a stand, I will take some pics and then ask how I can show them here,

Best Numpty Pete
Hi George, Sharkey, hope all is well. I can't fathom how many visits the pages get, unreal! I did just some quick math in my head, million page views...30,000 visits a day, 300,000 visits in 10 days, 600,000 for 20 days, close to a million for a month, 30 days. But here's what I don't understand. When I pull up a page like right now it always seems to show commensurate numbers: like 19 members, 63 guests right this minute. How is this possible? You're doing a superfine job, it's not about you, you're the best. 80 guests would have to do 352 thousand visits each no??? Just a bit confused in Miami...Thkx Shark
The number of members logged-in at any moment can vary from a few to about 25. We seldom have more than 25 member's logged-in at the same time. Its the anonymous folks (listed as guests) who aren't logged-in that is causing you confusion. We always have a bunch of guests, and they are constantly changing. For instance, at this moment we have 70 guests. If I come back in an hour, the number may still be at or near 70, but there may have been 100% turn-around since the previous hour. In other words a whole different group of anonymous people, all viewing a bunch of pages. This is happening 24 hours per day, with thousands of guests from around the world.
YIKES. You've created a monster! Can you imagine how much companies pay for that type exposure? Million hits or more monthly? Amazing how this took off. For years as Director of the NHOA, National HEMI Owners Association, we worked off a monthly newsletter & national level car shows for exposure. 5000 members. Consider though, Chrysler only built barely over 6000 real HEMI cars all those years, most of which were trashed from racing.
It's the computer age combined with your [relentless] talent at work. Those the facts George. Just the facts. Joe Friday. Thanks for the quick reply!
I "created" the text in my book three years before it became a book, and had the site www.tuningmadeeasy.com. During that three years I watched it grow from zero to 10000 hits per day. I could watch where users had come from if e g someone came via a link on a car forum. Word of mouth on these forums were the main source, googling tuning and easy and carburetor was another. In the end I thought I'd make more money publishing, so turned it into a book. I was wrong :-). But since I had 10000 hits per day, not counting robots etc. I'm not surprised we are in the millions here :-)

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