Choosing a good Mechanic

[kaymar]

I'm restoring a 1976 Spider, originally from USA. It was imported to UK in 1990, and came to Oz in about 2003.
I have a pile of dockets from various repairers over that UK sojourn, mostly of a mechanical nature, spread over about 3 owners that I can make out, and a melange of repairers.
The car did some 14.000 miles, not much. Collectively they spent over 8,000 Pounds Stirling, and replaced 2 sets of carbies, one engine recondition and an engine exchange, a recon gearbox.
To my mind that was a choice of a series of mechanics (?) that had little or no understanding of Alfas.
The car had none of these as new mechanicals when I bought it of course - that's how come I could afford it.
There's a moral in there somewhere.