Who Rebuilds Smiths Gauges?

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OldBalz

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Does anybody know of a company that rebuilds/reconditions Smiths speedos and tachs here in the U.S.A?

Thanks......
 
There's a guy on Ebay (user name aprivatepeace503) located in Portland.

He prefers to only work on Smiths product, but he rebuilt a Veglia speedo and repaired a Veglia tach for me and did a great job. Good customer service, gave me his cell phone number, etc.
 
lbridges said:
There's a guy on Ebay (user name aprivatepeace503) located in Portland.

He prefers to only work on Smiths product, but he rebuilt a Veglia speedo and repaired a Veglia tach for me and did a great job. Good customer service, gave me his cell phone number, etc.
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I bought a pair of early green blobs off him early this year - a nice job, but worth noting that it's evident that the bezels have been 'hand fitted' , i.e. peened over.
Not noticeable once they're in the cups, and 100% new looking, so fine by me :)
Even with Her Majesty's import extortion fees applied they were still pretty reasonable
 
B+Bogus said:
lbridges said:
There's a guy on Ebay (user name aprivatepeace503) located in Portland.

He prefers to only work on Smiths product, but he rebuilt a Veglia speedo and repaired a Veglia tach for me and did a great job. Good customer service, gave me his cell phone number, etc.
Click to expand...

I bought a pair of early green blobs off him early this year - a nice job, but worth noting that it's evident that the bezels have been 'hand fitted' , i.e. peened over.
Not noticeable once they're in the cups, and 100% new looking, so fine by me :)
Even with Her Majesty's import extortion fees applied they were still pretty reasonable
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I also bought a pair of the early style. Very nice.
 
Drive the clock with a drill. You might be surprised to find the clock
is good.
Mine went to Nissonger. Not cheap but relatively fast. They
have been around since I was a kid with my first brit bike.
 
+1 for Nisonger. I had a bad experience with Joel Levine, although I have heard he does good work.
 
Anoter recomendation for Joel Levine.
Excellant work and fast turn around.
Met him in person as he is a town away from where I live in Georgia... he's out of Atlanta and he's a 30 minute drive.
Very nice guy indeed

JD
 
lbridges said:
There's a guy on Ebay (user name aprivatepeace503) located in Portland.

He prefers to only work on Smiths product, but he rebuilt a Veglia speedo and repaired a Veglia tach for me and did a great job. Good customer service, gave me his cell phone number, etc.
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urp, use EXTREME caution with that guy. Im not going to go out of my way to trash the guy, if you got a good service out of him, great, and to be fair, I know a few people that used him and came out of it unscathed, and pretty good deal. but you need to be VERY careful. If he mended his ways, and is earning an honest living no one will be happier than me. Society is the better for it.

However he has a very checkered past. Many many years ago, this guy, (His name is Bobby Carter) his Dad and a another guy burglarized a shop here in Portland (Cycle Hub, the Sandy Bandit Cliff Mahjor). They brke in thru a skylight, lowered young Bobby in on a rope and brought out buckets of parts via rope, later advertised the stuff in the local Nickel paper (not the smartest criminals) and Cliffs old partner drove over wearing a long haired wig and mirroed sunglasses and a borrowed car so they would not recognize him
He checked the parts, and called the cops, for some reaosn the police couldnt make the case against all of them, just young Bobby
But 'ol cliff reported more than what was stolen ( a trident amongst other stuff) and filed an insurance claim. as a result this elevated the crime to a felony. Young Bobby spent a lot of time in prison.
When i first met him he came to my old shop and was upfront about his history. and then he had a bit of heroin problem and was working the 12 step program (good for him) so as part of his steps had confronted old Cliff and apologized but mentioned "You know I didnt steal that Trident" Cliff told him "Yeah,, i know". Cliffs attitude was who cares? you stole from me,, you take your lumps.
For a veriety of reasons I wont deal with the guy and he is 86'ed for life as far as I am concerned even though I dont run a shop anymore.
He has fallen off the wagon a number of times and i just dont do well with junkies so i keep my distance. My experience though is he plays games ( i could tell you a lot of storys) and the guy is always working an angle. If there was a direct path from point A to point B, he sure wont take it. If you tried to show up and see his workshop, or even his house you will never get close. I dont think he personally is building the gauges. I have seen the work and end results and for the price it looks pretty good.

But you take a real risk with this guy. If he is on the straight and narrow, and clean and sober. Im 100% in favor of it. But i have no interest in having anything to do with him based on past experiences. Im not even going to say stay away. In fact if if it keeps him away from a life of drugs and crime we need to hope that continues. But Caveat emptor, use due dilligence and use caution.
I think he has another ebay account "Smiths gauges are us" or something. He is known to have multiple ebay accounts and even bids on his own stuff, Sometimes he uses other peoples names as well. Always an angle with that guy

Personally I use Nissonger, they were the original service center for BSA, Norton,and Triumph and in my stilted limited view are still the best. I had some problems with 2 sets of gauges built by Joel Levine and they refused to take care of me, that was 13 years ago and have not gone back since. i have heard others are happy with him.

When doing a restoration, its gonna cost you to get it right, And i have a lot of original gauges but on my riders I use asian replicas, I pay $50 each dealer price and never had ANY problems, some are in service 20 years now and still going strong, they are currently availible in black face and grey face, havent seen any green dots, Ive been looking at some chrono replicas but have not tried them yet
 
internetannoyance said:
lbridges said:
There's a guy on Ebay (user name aprivatepeace503) located in Portland.
Click to expand...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
use EXTREME caution with that guy. Im not going to go out of my way to trash the guy, if you got a good service out of him, great, and to be fair, I know a few people that used him and came out of it unscathed, and pretty good deal. but you need to be VERY careful. If he mended his ways, and is earning an honest living no one will be happier than me. Society is the better for it.
Click to expand...


I bought a Speedo from this seller.....cosmetically it's the best but the same can't be said for it mechanically. The speedo crapped out after 3,000 miles. He said it was probably my cable....replaced and lubed it previously. Rear speedo drive is good too. Bought a used speedometer from a different guy for peanuts and it's been working great. Caveat emptor.
 
internetannoyance said:
Personally I use Nissonger, they were the original service center for BSA, Norton,and Triumph and in my stilted limited view are still the best. I had some problems with 2 sets of gauges built by Joel Levine and they refused to take care of me, that was 13 years ago and have not gone back since. i have heard others are happy with him.
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My local guy had an issue with Nissonger over a decade ago, and hasn't been back. He deals exclusively with Joel Levine.
He sent my grey face speedo from the P11 to Joel for a rebuild. The trip meter wouldn't work when I got the bike running. Wes sent it back to him and he claimed to work on it, the trip wouldn't work. He sent it back a third time, thing still doesn't work. I gave up. I ran the bike around for three months without a speedo waiting for Joel, and just figured it wasn't worth the hassle. One of Joel's rebuilds runs $225-250, and the turn-around is usually a couple of weeks, but I'm not very happy.

I guess its a crap shoot whoever you use, and they're only as good as the last time you use them. If you do eight jobs with a guy and job number nine goes bad, the guy's done.
 
Joel Levine did some gauges for a 1971 Yamaha RT1 I'm restoring . When I called to tell him the red line was done all wrong along with the colors he got rude with me. Said his graphic artist are hard to deal with and blah blah blah. Said I could send them back but they were busy and it would take about 4 to 6 months to get them back. And then no guarantee they would be right. Wasted over $500 with him not mention he ruined the hard to find gauges.
 
Interesting story I.A. Nice of that guys dad to let him take the rap for that shit and even cooler of shop owner to make a bad situation worse by tacking on fake Trident theft. Good info to have though. I guess I'll just cross my fingers with my new gauges. I would have rebuilt my old ones but they were sitting on 1776 when I started resto and it seemed right to leave them that way.
 
Snorton74 said:
Interesting story I.A. Nice of that guys dad to let him take the rap for that shit and even cooler of shop owner to make a bad situation worse by tacking on fake Trident theft. Good info to have though. I guess I'll just cross my fingers with my new gauges. I would have rebuilt my old ones but they were sitting on 1776 when I started resto and it seemed right to leave them that way.
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Im not an expert but I can think I can understand why the guy has had issues over the years, Some say you broke the law, tough S**T, deal with it. The story is well known here in PDX in the MC community. Cliff is still alive (the shop owner) and can confirm the story.
I cant speak for his motives but i doubt he lost sleep over sticking it to a thief, now im sure the insurance company and the courts might have a thing or 2 to say about the extra items reported missing, but i have a lot of Cops in the family and all of them shrug their shoulders and say no tears or sympathy for a thief. Cliffs old partner (used to be 2 shops,one on Sandy blvd and the other on Killingsowrth?) is still around and he told me his version as well. Still laughs about those idiots trying to sell stolen stuff in the want ads and thinking they would get away with it. The partner told me he STILL has the old hippy wig, normally he wears a flat top crew cut.
He got out of the MC business a long time ago.
I hope your gauges do okay. I know several people who tried to drop the stuff of AT his place (Bobbys) always a story and excuse, meet somewhere else, or shipping only., Met a guy a while back who is supposedly a close friend, several of us asked if he ever saw where the magic happens, where he rebuilds them. Even he says he has never seen any kind of workspace or evidence Bobby is doing the work.
If past experience is any indication,,someone else is actually doing the work and Bobby is the go-between.

The irony is a few years back under another account he was selling triumph parts and claiming he was sourcing them from the world famous "Sandy Bandit, Cliff Mahjor of Cycle Hub" in Portland Oregon. He put that in many of his auctions, Dont say the guy doesnt have a sense of humor. probably belaboring the point but I can assure he was NOT sourcing parts from cycle hub.

Conversely I used to have some shop customers who also had a dark past, one of them used to also be a heroin addict and the biggest dealer in town, however when I knew him he was off the drugs and worked real hard to make up for his wrongs, he pushed many people into sobriety and worked full time as a drug counselor. He had a cool old BSA he puttered around on and I have no problems with a person who turned their life around.

Ill aslo add it isnt easy working with the public on old decripit 30 to 50 year old British bikes, Thats why I dont like to work on other peoples stuff, And except for a few select people I dont. I restore and build bikes for myself and a few to sell, If you like it, great, buy it, if you dont, no worrys. But I dont have to answer the phone every day "is it done yet? is it done yet?"
 
internetannoyance said:
Ill aslo add it isnt easy working with the public on old decripit 30 to 50 year old British bikes
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I was at my guy's shop a couple years ago when a customer came by to pick up his 750 Roadster. Wes was giving it a test ride, and I said, "nice bike, sounds good." This guy said "I'm sick of this money pit. Every time I take it out, it's another $1600." He picked up his bike and left. I asked Wes what the story was, and he replied that the guy had taken it out for a ride and parked it in his garage for about a month without shutting the fuel off. Gas had slowly leaked into the engine, filling up the crank case and even seeping into the primary through the crank seal. He didn't notice, and took the bike out and ran it until it started making funny noises.
Wes replaced the bearings, primary chain and petcock. Guy thought his Commando was a POS because he didn't think to shut off the fuel, or look where his full tank of gas went when he took it back out.

Old bikes of any origin need an owner with some mechanical ability and a lot of common sense.

Sadly, this guy had more money than brains.
 
BillT said:
internetannoyance said:
Old bikes of any origin need an owner with some mechanical ability and a lot of common sense.

Sadly, this guy had more money than brains.
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I could spend hours telling those kinds of storys. Some with very little money and little brains.
I know a few engineer types too... very very smart guys in CERTAIN areas, however baffling and idiots in other areas. Maybe im in that category as well. I know one guy, can look at a part and tell you what kind of steel or stainless to make it of for an Aerospace application, can tell you what kind of heat treat and what Rockwell it needs,, and can quote you the current materials price as he checks multiple times per day and how much labor and machine time it would take, calculate his profit and expenses and do it in a minute without writing it down.
literally a genius. He has owned British bikes and cars for 40 years. But he cant rebuild an engine, time one, or figure out cam timing.
or many other tasks you would think he can or should be able to master. Some other engineering types as well are prone to this type of thing.
Ive had some wealthy customers who were great to work for, made sure you made enough money on the job, were worried you might quit and stop fixing their bikes. But often I had weatlhy people who were huge PIA and very dysfunctional
Then there are the people, regardless of income who shouldnt ever own a mechanical device. If you worked on it 5 or 10 years ago and it breaks down, it must be your fault. Then there are the crazy ones. I could go on for hours.

Im happy where im at, I still build bikes, still sell some parts and have a core group of people I work with. I give out free advice and teach some classes. There was a shop in Portland that opened up last summer, one of the guys wanted me really badly to go into business with them. Im glad I didnt. I told them I would help where I could but i wasnt getting back into a shop situation dealing with the public again. One guy had his act together, the other one, while a nice guy I think, was a disaster. It was the shortest lived shop in local history. 3 months plus or minus
 
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