Michigan Delorean Service? Help!

["pbartusek" <pbmain@xxxx>]

I wanted to post this message to see if anyone knows of someone who 
works on Deloreans in the Michigan/Detroit area. 

I've had a service nightmare this year, my first summer of Delorean 
ownership - I took my car to a local shop, as it was hunting around 
at idle and would stick at 2000rpm when you accellerated. If you 
backed off the acceleration it would zoom up as high as you wanted. 

It all kicked off when I was doing a tune up (Bosch 
rotor/cap/plugs/wires from a Delorean shop), so it seemed like a 
simple diagnosis at first - reverse what you did, and it should 
work...or find out what you bumped along the way and you should have 
figured your problem out, right? Not exactly. Quite a bit of 
troubleshooting later, I decided to take it to a local shop that had 
worked on Deloreans and tons of 
Volvos/Mercedes/Jags/Lotus/Panoz/BMWs... all the headache cars other 
shops usually don't touch.

For two and a half months now it's been at a shop - in June they 
counted 12 hours of tech time to troubleshoot and repair the 
problem, and said there was a problem with the thermal vacuum switch 
under the intake. They said it wasn't doing anything - 
unfortunately, requiring the removal of the intake to get to the 
switch. New O rings and gaskets with that, and the car was idling 
nicely...sounded very good - so it cleared up that problem, but it 
would not accelerate over 2000rpm. July came around and the tech 
has 20 hours into it in July. Warm up regulator or fuel distributor 
needs replacing, he said - I had the warm up regulator replaced. 
The car runs up to about 4000 rpm. The Fuel distributor was also a 
possibility, but the tech was able to swap it out with a different 
car that was there and it still had the same symptoms. Also swapped 
out a new fuel pump I had in the system, just to see if it would 
make any difference, and it did not. All the fuel pressures have 
been checked, vacuum levels, etc...specs check out but the car runs 
lean during acceleration. The car looked like it was in intensive 
care with all these dials and meters hooked up to it at different 
phases of the testing. 

To make a long story short, I'm sitting with a bill that will be up 
to 32hours ($65-$85 an hour, you do the math)... which will be 
adjusted I'm sure, as the car is not running properly, but the 
tech's end diagnosis is that cam timing is off and they need to pull 
the engine apart to get to the timing chains and check that out, 
estimated around another $465, plus while they're in there....do a 
valve adjustment, estimated around $85. 

The problem I have is that I haven't been real impressed with what 
my return on investiment this 32 hours of service has got me, and 
I'd like to take this to someone who knows what the hell they are 
doing as I need the peace of mind that at least I'm not going to be 
a part of any more guesswork than necessary. I've already been on 
the roller coaster of "Lets try this, this should do it" and finding 
out $300 later that it hasn't done anything, and then a few weeks 
later the next $300 idea comes up. I used to work for this shop, 
and have a good relationship with them, but my patience has just 
worn thin - I didn't intend on having my car sit in a shop for the 
entire summer collecting thousands of dollars of bills and not have 
it running right. Anyone in the Midwest knows, the summer months of 
good weather are highly coveted, if you're a car enthusiast!

If anyone has any suggestions on service shops in Detroit, people in 
the area that do side work, places I can drive to meet up with 
someone that knows about the engine and fuel system, or even anyone 
with experience in how to deal with some of these service situations 
where shops are spending a ton of hours on something - I don't feel 
all that comfortable spending $2500 for a car that isn't working 
right, but I don't feel comfortable saying "screw you" to time that 
a tech had on a car...and above all, I'm not all the comfortable 
saying "sure, let's go ahead with another $500 idea by pulling the 
motor apart to check the cam timing". Any thoughts? 

Desperate in Detroit
Pete