ChrisWhewell
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Posts posted by ChrisWhewell
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I hit a deere recently, messed up the black polymeric housing in which the headlamp resides pretty badly, like broke into pieces. So, I got some steel window screen and cut several appropriately-shaped pieces of it and used them as reinforcements for the epoxy I'd had to use in several places. Amazingly, all the holes lined up to where they should !! So, I recommend reinforcing the epoxy, kinda like the screen acts like rebar. I wonder how it will hold up to the Texas heat.... we'll find out come april. Maybe I should be concerned how it holds up in the cold.... we'll find that out pretty quick here...
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Sorry if I upset anyone, i realize people are a lot more "sennnnsitive" than back in my day. Good luck !!
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Thanks. I have a spare extra second 1990 reatta in the barn, same color. I can take the fender off that one. I'm wondering if this is a 2 hour job, or a 12 hour job, to remove a front fender from a Reatta, because I obviously am the type of intuit person who plans ahead :) ps, I'm running on a Mac, I passionately dislike Microsoft products. :)
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Thanks Barney !! I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving. Given my recent deer encounter, I'm needing to remove the front left fender, I'm wondering how involved that is..... I'd create a new topic but my computer is outdated and doesn't interface well with this site, sometimes it lets me create new topics but 95% of the time it doesn't
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My best theory on it so far is that there's some kind of stray capacitance present when wire is connected to trunk lamp. And that it somehow causes something somewhere to go into oscillation or resonance.
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Some of you may recall reading my complaints about my 90, door locks and trunk lid automatically going off repeatedly, to the extent it would kill the battery. The answer ? I unhooked the red wire that supplies electricity to the trunk lamp. Problem solved. No trunk light but i'm good with it.
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Just pick a geographical region having an area and determine the # of vehicles, then estimate the fuel consumption per vehicle, to arrive at an est. of all fuel burned. Then convert to Btu's or whatever's convenient and divide by the area of the selected region to arrive at a figure for the amount of heat per square unit of surface in the region. I bet its not that much compared to impinging solar radiation
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Wish I were there. How's the farmers ? enough rain this year ? Barney is a walking Reatta encyclopedia :) Mine's been doing well, driving like a new car. I hope your Reatta never breaks down
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Thank you. Maybe I will try a new modulator, b/c the cable looked good and tight. By the way, I took your suggestion from a while back and used wd40 to get the dealer sticker adhesive off the rear of the car, I used a .58 mm nylon guitar pick as a "scraper", it worked great.
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On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 6:00 PM, 89RedDarkGrey said:
Why not simply separate the boards to clean? They appear to be the same as most IR remote controllers- carbon impregnated tip silicone buttons. I guess this method is physically easier, as long as the proper cleaner is used, such as THIS. Isopropyl alcohol contains water, and could leave residue.
If interested, you can obtain 99.9% isopropanol from electronics supply stores, such as Fry's electronics, its $8 for a quart.
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On my 90, I'll be tooling around about 40 mph, and suddenly have a desire to go a little faster, so I make a torque request (press the gas pedal) and instead of going faster, the transmission shifts to the next higher gear, which gives me a bog, instead of more speed. arrgh
I saw the youtube video of the fellow teaching how to adjust the transmission cable and haven't tried messing with that yet, and am wondering if perhaps it isn't something else.
This sometimes happens at highway speed, I'll hit the gas to pass someone, but it bogs, the torque convertor locks and the rpms drop, giving me less torque than I want. I've been manually downshifting which works fine but I sense something somewhere is out of adjustment. I checked vacuum line to the modulator and by visual inspection all is well. So, I'm a bit befuddled !!
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Hey Barney, I have a rhetorical question for you..... If you woke up tomorrow and there was a Reatta in your yard with a signed title on the front seat, would you pursue criminal charges against the perpetrator, or just start ripping parts off it prior to calling a wrecker ?
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I agree Dave, as people have less money, once the old timers are gone, and as demographics change, I sense that prices will drop. What's the value of a 69 mustang in a third world country, like Michigan ? lol
Its all going to depend on demand, and demand requires money, that people have less and less of it seems -
That's insane, sounds suspicious. As in.... how does a fire like that get started ?
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Mine had the same problem. The contacts on the buttons are oxidized. The fix has been put up on these boards by Barney Eaton, and involves removing the unit. Then, cut strips of paper 1 cm wide and 5 cm long and soak them in a volatile solvent, such as a naphtha (Ronson lighter fluid) or mass airflow sensor cleaner, and insert the wet strip between the contacts, apply slight pressure to the switch as you pull the solvent-soaked paper back out. Repeat for each button switch. The paper I used was Post-It notes, it worked great
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Check rpm gauge. AC compressor will not engage if the rpm gauge in the IPC is reading zero rpms with engine running. On mine I had intermittent electrical problem with ECM, that made rpm gauge read normally one minute when the engine was running, and then the next minute it went to zero rpm even though the engine was running. When the gauge went to zero rpm, the compressor would disengage. I posted about this but apparently nobody else ever observed it or made the connection, but I guarantee it is a real fact of correlation between rpm gauge on IPC display and whether or not AC compressor runs The fix for me was to replace ECM.
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My cc just stopped working also. It was fine about 3 weeks ago. Thanks for all the posts above, i think I'll go look for a vacuum leak. The yellow "cruise" light comes on, so maybe it will be an easy fix
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Thanks for the photos Barney, I enjoyed
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You're right on about mechanic shops, they are looking for one of those type of eccentric bolts and yeah, our cars don't have it. LOL, someone trying to turn that camber lock bolt to adjust camber, yeah, they'd break it for sure not seeing it have any effect on the camber. Just have to explain it to them before they get in there. But, by the time I get it to the shop, I could have the job half done by then :) I figure the caster doesn't matter that much unless its really really off, but exactly how is that ever going to happen ?? I guess I'll measure it but really, you can eyeball it, I laid a lot of tile floors and walls without so much as a chalk line, lol. Toe shouldn't have changed much since tie rod ends go same length to knuckle and those new struts appear to be relatively precision-made, probably the oem supplier I wouldn't be surprised. Yee haw, now I can take a nice ride.
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I put it all back together, passenger front camber is right at zero. Drivers side looks to be about 4 deg. positive, so I have to re-do that side. LOL, I lightly dinged the brake sensor during the process and also, the car being jacked in the front I naturally used the parking brake. But forgot the parking brake was on. When I started it up I saw the feared red brake warning light, ugh, I thought I did a damage, but then remembered to release the emerg. brake. Whew. I took it for a spin, it drove straight and when I hit the brakes it stopped straight also. Its nice to finally have all four new struts on, the car rides a lot nicer
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We can measure the angle that the brake rotor face is tilted; its position in the air right now looks to be about 2-3 degrees positive camber. The question is, once the wheels are put on the the front end is lowered, how much will the camber be changed from the spring compression ? If it were a known constant that the angle changed x degrees, then it should be possible to set the proper camber with the wheels off and the front end jacked up by the frame.
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I just changed the final strut up front. Car on jackstands both wheels off. Looking at this: http://reattaowner.com/roj/77-suspension-a-brakes/suspension/291-front-strut-replacement . Step 4. After step 4, I don't think its an option to alter the position of the camber bolt. In the fsm the camber bolt has a torque spec. Its purpose is to hold things tight and in position after camber is adjusted. Of the two strut-to-knuckle bolts, the lower one functions as a pivot, the upper bolt being the clamping lock. Once the new strut is in, I grab th brake rotor at top and bottom, and move the joint of knuckle to strut to get a feel of its complete amount of total possible travel. Then go to the middle where it looks and feels "good", then I tighten the top clamping bolt, then the lower one. No camber position is going to be at either ends of the extremeties of travel of that joint, and when you're holding it moving it up and down, you can kind of "feel" where it "wants to be". The last step is to tighten the camber adjustment bolt to 7 foot-lbs, its there for stability. The camber adjustment is set in stone by the two clamping bolts.
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That's pretty slick, makes me want one
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Woo hoo, it was only 98 degrees today so I decided to change out that second front strut. I used the Ronnie method on the spring, except my vise is a piece of fertilizer, so I had to do it when the rig was on the floor. Just went slowly and cautiously, the whole deal took about an hour, getting it back in is harder than getting it out but at least I didn't over-extend the CV joint this time. Hurray, I finally have all new struts in. Next is wheel alignment, I'm hoping to do it myself, I never had much luck with mechanics. Well, my sweat glands are in good shape that's for sure
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Engines that would "work" in the Reatta
in Buick Reatta
Posted · Edited by ChrisWhewell (see edit history)
Somebody should pick a motor setup, and make a kit available to easify the swap to a better performing engine. From all the reading I've done, the best I can come up with is heads/ manifold, and clear the restriction out of the rear exh. manifold. Total gain maybe 35-40 ft. lbs. Anything more than that, is beyond my abilities. But, I'd shell out $2500 - $3k if there were a kit offered that would enable me to drop in a series II SC 3800, if it were plug n play.