About

Who is behind Galeeco Automotive?

Suranga Kithmal Kariyawasam is the founder of Galeeco Automotive, an MTA member auto repair business with two workshops in Auckland, New Zealand. He’s a mechanical engineer by training, works on vehicles personally alongside his technicians, and writes the technical advice published on the Galeeco blog.

The workshops themselves have more than 30 years of trading history. Suranga purchased the business and rebranded it as Galeeco Automotive in March 2017.

What are Suranga’s engineering qualifications?

Suranga holds a National Diploma in Technology, Mechanical Engineering, from the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, completed in 2007. He went on to complete a Bachelor of Engineering Technology at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) in Australia. He also personally holds a WOF inspector authorisation.

Since qualifying in 2007, he’s worked as a vehicle damage assessor for an insurer, and as a truck and light vehicle mechanic and maintenance officer with the Royal Army of Oman, before taking ownership of Galeeco in March 2017.

A mechanical engineer who still picks up the tools

Plenty of workshops are owned by someone who used to be a mechanic. Fewer are owned by someone who still is — and fewer still by someone who trained as an engineer first.

He’s under vehicles, on diagnostic equipment, and involved in the jobs that need an engineer’s judgement rather than a parts catalogue — the diagnoses where the fault code points one way and the physical evidence points another. The person who owns the business is the person whose reputation is attached to the diagnosis, and he’s close enough to the work to know whether it was done properly.

Why does mechanical engineering matter in a repair workshop?

It’s not a decorative qualification. Mechanical engineering is the study of exactly what a repair workshop deals with every day: loads, tolerances, thermal behaviour, materials under stress, and how a fault in one system surfaces as a symptom somewhere else.

That’s the difference between replacing the part that triggered the warning light and finding the thing that killed it. It’s also why Galeeco takes on work most independent workshops send away:

• Engine and transmission rebuilds, including Eaton Fuller heavy transmissions, where clearances and tolerances decide whether a rebuild lasts.
• Diesel emissions systems, including DPF, AdBlue, and EGR diagnosis and repair.
• Rebuilding accident-damaged and deregistered vehicles, including Land Rover Defenders and other 4x4s, restored to road-ready condition.
• Performance ECU tuning using Alientech equipment.
• Heavy diesel and fleet work, covering trucks, vans, utes, and buses.

Suranga personally oversees engine and transmission rebuild work — the jobs where his training is most directly useful.

How does Suranga run Galeeco day to day?

• Nothing gets done that you haven’t approved: If a technician finds a fault mid-job, work stops and you get a phone call. That’s a standing rule, and it reflects the MTA Code of Ethics that binds us as a member business.
• Repair before replace: Replacing a whole assembly is faster and more profitable than diagnosing and repairing the actual fault. We do the harder thing.
• Say when something isn’t our job: Some work belongs with a specialist, and we’ll tell you.
• Keep repairs reachable: Accepting WINZ quotes and offering Afterpay, Laybuy, and Zip is a deliberate decision about who gets to keep their vehicle on the road.
• Be accountable: As an MTA member, our customers can use MTA’s free mediation service on 0508 682 633 if something can’t be resolved directly. Suranga also serves as Galeeco’s Privacy Officer under the Privacy Act 2020.