Making Cash From Your Dash Alsin Speedometer Provides Unique Auto Services

These are fast times for Alsin Speedometer.

Owner Charles Peterson says the company has thrived on a steady flow of vehicles wholesalers are hauling across the border from Canada.

All have speedometers calibrated in kilometers per hour - not much use to someone trying to push the limit between, say, Ritzville and the Tri-Cities.

So for anywhere from $200 to $600, Peterson, his father, Dean, or their one employee will swap out metric dashboard units for those that register miles.

Peterson said the Canadian conversions made up almost 90 percent of his business last year.

“If the Canadians stopped coming down, that would hurt us big time,” he said.

He said wholesalers are buying up vehicles north of the border using deeply discounted Canadian dollars. A pickup truck purchased for $10,000 Canadian, for example, may well sell for the same amount of U.S. dollars at auction in Spokane, he said.

The profits created by the currency spread are so attractive Peterson has seen 1999 models come south.

He said laws adopted in the past few years require wholesalers to process their vehicles through a registered importer. The importers must photograph the vehicle identification number and odometer when the cars or trucks come across the border, he said.

Then Alsin gets the vehicles at his shop at 2327 E. Riverside for a dashboard transplant. Peterson said the intensified scrutiny discourages once-common odometer tampering.

He said he sometimes gets requests from individuals who want odometers rolled back before they try to sell their vehicles.

Owners of street rods who have overhauled cars or trucks from the 1930s and ‘40s also want the service, he said.

Because there is no requirement mileage be disclosed on vehicles more than 10 years old, Peterson said, he will oblige the car customizers.

He tells the others that odometer tampering is illegal, he said.

Peterson said he adjusts analog units, but must take digital units to dealers.

Chrysler minivans, he noted, don’t store mileage information in the dash, but in a computer chip.

Not only will the chip restore the proper total when a new unit is swapped for one that is defective, it also senses when a Canadian unit is replaced with a U.S. unit, and adjusts the total to reflect the change from kilometers to miles.

Changes in technology have reduced demand for the kind of specialized service Alsin supplies. When the company was founded in 1961 by World War II POW Paul Alsin, two or three other shops in Spokane also did nothing but speedometer work, Peterson said.

Alsin is the only one left. Dean Peterson bought the business in 1987 but, he said, Alsin still drops by the shop occasionally.

Charles Peterson said he keeps more than 100 dash units in stock. In a good week - and there were a lot of good weeks in 1998 - Alsin might install 50 of those, he said.

After 12 years of practice, Peterson wastes little time under the dash.

“If I’m in there more than 15 minutes, something’s wrong,” he said.

But he adds the wholesalers are very particular that installations be done right, because an oversight deducts from the vehicle’s value at auction.

In addition to conversions, Peterson said a few motorists bring speeding tickets they want to challenge. For that, Alsin has a dynamometer.

“Nine out of 10 times the cop was right,” Peterson said.

He said some are betrayed by discrepancies in tire sizes. A speedometer calibrated to the tire size prescribed for the vehicle will understate the speed somewhat if the driver mounts larger tires, he said.

Alsin also does benchwork on speedometers from old vehicles, Peterson said, including Ford Model A’s.

“We have old, old parts,” he said.

But mechanics with the know-how to install them are getting scarcer. “It’s a dying art,” Peterson said.