Troublesome Spider gauges

["Paul Misencik" <paul@domain.elided>]

It's probably a thread that has been beaten to death, so forgive me if it's
old news, but what's the consensus on the gauges in a late-1980's Spider?

My '87 currently has two functioning gauges.  The speedometer and the fuel
gauge.  Everything else is nonfunctional.  The tach moves, but erroneously,
and nothing else registers any life at all.  My local Alfa mechanic, who knows
Alfas well, is telling me that it's just "the nature of the beast".  That if I
spend time and money fixing them all and/or having them rebuilt, they are all
just going to crap out again.  Probably sooner rather than later.  Overall,
(helpful as he usually is) he doesn't seem even the slightest bit interested
or confident about getting them sorted.

But I want my gauges working.

Should I go through the process of replacing all the senders, having the
gauges rebuilt, and going through the whole rigamarole?  It won't be cheap.
Should I pull them all out and fabricate a sort of "custom" dash that uses
better quality instruments like VDO or AutoMeter?  I have no climate control,
so I suppose I could mount three in the air vents on the dash.  Of course,
that won't be cheap either, and I'm not wild about having a totally non-stock
dashboard arrangement (although it wouldn't be the end of the world...)
What's the most cost-effective and permanent way to handle this?  I want to do
this job exactly ONCE.  I would much rather spend my time futzing with engine
performance and suspension tuning and saving up for a TZ replica, not fixing
gauges.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.  I'm frustrated and open to
anything at this point...

Cheers,

Paul Misencik
P. Roman Media
Huntersville, NC  28078
email: paul@domain.elided
www.paoloroman.com
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