Dakota Dash...

[Louie G <louie@xxxx>]

Since I'm the other owner of a Dakota Digital dash I feel obligated to share experiences and viewpoint on this modification as well. As Matthew stated, my car's previous owner installed the dash. He did a pretty hacked job. He didn't wire it correctly.... and really never finished the job. My temperature gague gets a reading about 1% of the time (if that). My oil gague's readings are off by about -40%, and my voltage reading is usually about 1 volt less than actual. The parking brake warning NEVER flashes when the brakeis on, but loves to randomly (and annoyingly!) flash when the brake ISN'T on. My tach just about has to be on the high side, as it's read above 7000 rpm's before. I believe the speedo is the only gague on the entire dash that operates correctly 100% of the time. 

The dash has been nothing but one big headache and aggrevation since day one. I really don't like not knowing what's really going on as far as oil pressure, water temperature, and voltage goes. I've had so many false alarms over the past year due to faulty readings. 

Of course this is totally objective here, but I feel the dash is cheesy looking too. It just screams "cheap!!!" to me... even though the system cost nearly $1,000!!! I also feel the DeLorean is a classic car... and I'm reallyfor keeping originality as far as classics go. I just don't like the factthat it disturbs the factory wiring of the car as much as it does too. There's a heck of alot of wire splicing going on. It's not plug and play. There's a little control module mounted under the dash that all the factory wiring is cut and fused into. You can't just remove the Dakota Dash and plug back in the old gagues... you have to do lots and lots of wire tracing and such to get the wiring back the way it once was. This is why I got so frusterated as to offer the dash up for free to anyone who would remove it, and put my original analogues back in. I ended up backing out of that... becausethere was a real possibility someone trying to remove the dash could screwup my car even further... so.... I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to fix this mess. I guess I'm just going to save up and send my car to PJ Grady's. It needs a good tuning anyways :-). So the moral of this story is... if you absolutely must have this modification... don't let anyone short of Rob Grady himself do it. Otherwise you're in for alot of heartache. 

Louie Golden
#10115 Sanford, NC