HQ Orchid metallic Sandman on Ebay

[Sandaro]

Previous opinions on speedos including from Byron and Inners

http://www.mysandman.com.au/forums/s...sandman+speedo

[Innuendo]

Previous opinions on speedos including from Byron and Inners

http://www.mysandman.com.au/forums/s...sandman+speedo

I was fully down with the 220kph speedo for Sandman, because like Byron I believed HQ Sandman's got all the GTS options.
Today I'm not so sure. While Byron's document says what it "should" have it, doesn't make it so.

I read this thread: http://www.mysandman.com.au/forums/s...ndman-Speedo-s

Didn't come away convinced. Absinth at least mentions the different brands and HQSS Paul was really being thorough. Too many times people state that their Sandman came with a 200kph speedo.
All the images I find mainly looked to be prostituted dashboards with bits missing or odd custom paint colours. The yellow HQ Sandman Ozbox sold dashboard is an abomination of old and new parts and doesn't fill me with any confidence. Buickzz and Bryan's barbarous HQ Sandmans both have 200kph speedos along with numerous other images I have collected over the years of "HQ Sandman's" for sale. Both nice clean examples to basket cases.

So many "not in the build or no longer in the build" confirmed original Sandman's I look at have the 200kph speedo fitted. Why? it's easy enough to purchase a 220kph speedo.

Anyway, I'm not convinced one way or the other now. I'm 100% sure some came with 220kph speedo's but I'm not convinced they all did...

That said, my Owners Manual dated April '74 that has been with my Sandman from new shows the 220kph speedo in illustration. Yet the Sandman it's from has a 200kph speedo fitted.

Could the speedo have been replaced - yep! But it could have been there from the start also.
The illustration also shows a push button radio and I know that wasn't always the case with 3 or more radio options. Based on the Owners Manual it would mean "all '74" HQ's Monaro LS/GTS/Sandman or even a Belmont with option would have got the 220klm speedo and I 100% know that isn't true.

[Absinth]

Buickzz and Bryan's barbarous HQ Sandmans both have 200kph speedos along with numerous other images I have collected over the years of "HQ Sandman's" for sale.

Anyway, I'm not convinced one way or the other now. I'm 100% sure some came with 220kph speedo's but I'm not convinced they all did...

Buickzz van was Acacia Ridge built and Acacia Ridge is notorious for build stuff ups from not stamping plates correctly to installing parts that shouldn't be on a particular model. My old man worked on the production line at Acacia Ridge during 1970-1971 and told me many stories of his antics there from assembling XU1's to bets with other line workers to assemble cars with upgraded parts.... forgetting to put a GTS speedo in a Sandman would be nothing new. Production broadcast sheets were not supposed to be left in the vehicles but they have been found under dashpads and floor coverings or stuffed inside seats. It was a running joke to see what they could slip past QA.

Production line workers could have been so conditioned to only installing GTS speedos in GTS vehicles that when a van or ute came along in 74 that was a Sandman they just put a standard one in it. There are more and more Brisbane built HQ Sandmans being found that don't have XX7 stamped on the plate.