ChrisWhewell

My '56 Ferguson F40 tractor has the old school water separator glass bowl between the gas tank and the carburetor. I noticed it was half full of water a month ago, so ran the tank dry and cleaned the glass. Then I got new fresh gasoline and now a month later I go out and look and its half full of water again. So, the ethanol gasoline comes with water in it. I think the max spec is on the order of 0.3% water. Imagine, if you could reap the profits by adding just 0.1% water to the entire nation's gasoline supply, how much money that would be. Meantime, in the Reatta, the same problem is present as on the tractor, but for the recirculation of the fuel pump back into the tank from the fuel rail, so we really don't notice it, except if you have a crap idle quality, that could be the problem. I've been adding isopropanol to my car's tank. Luckily I don't drive much. The refineries owners suck, giving us sh*t gasoline.

Yes Padget, that is a great motor, in my opinion the epitome of Chevy for the late 80's / early 90's. I got it for my son when he graduated, it wasn't running. It turned out to be the ign module. But, it was factory-located up front under the exh. manifold. That sucked so much, I moved it to be located in the fenderwell. Great motor. When I was a kid watching star-trek, I remember Mr. Spock once said to a Klingon: "Threats are illogical" and never forgot that. So whenever someone threatens to leave, I just reply "Live long and prosper" Millenial-type drama has even "trickled up" into national politics it seems. eeek. I joined the IDGAD club a couple years ago. That stands for "I don't give a.... :)

Upgrading to GM from the Magnavox is easy. The hardest part was getting a base plate from a later model car at the junkyard. Get the nuts too. Any module from a V6 should work. The one in my Reatta came off of a 93 Olds with a 3.4L DOHC motor, which is the same part as on my 98 Riv.

My eyeglasses are polycarbonate and they got a little solvent on them, which clouded them. I tried toothpaste, and the stuff they sell for headlamps, and I watched every amateur on the internet youtube videos with their fixes but none worked. I finally figured it out - I used my jeweler's polishing / buffing wheel and chucked it onto my bench grinder. Then, using jeweler's rouge, I polished my lenses. Perfectly clear. So, the answer for headlamps polycarbonate if I ever go there, would be to chuck that buffing wheel into a drill, sop it with a little rouge and go at the headlamps.

@2seater "Funny this should come up now. I am working on resurrecting a couple of scrap heads I received from Daves89. The stock intake valve is 1.71" and there is about .062" space between the intake and exhaust valves. So, it would appear about a 1.82" intake valve would fit. The ports on these heads aren't bad on these engines and respond well to minor porting and cleanup work. I think the 10* valve angle helps a lot. I am experimenting now with back cuts on the intake valve and a 15* and 30* cut on the back are worth a few cfm, particularly below .250" lift. The exhaust port is very good stock, just clean it up." . I agree there is much left on the table regarding low lift flow, typically a ridge or wall in the comb. chamber circumscribing the periphery of the valves. Ihave a spare complete LN3 in my parts car and hate to tear into it just for the heads, so I'm starting to wonder what other heads might be a direct drop in with no BS respecting brackets and other anciallary features. Maybe nothing and I'll just have to find some junk LN3 heads to work on. I use Neway cutters, a jeweler's eyepiece and I get every seat width perfect and also right where it needs to be on the valve. Takes a lot of time and blue dye. Can't get that easily from the machine shops. It takes a lot of time but I get them perfectamundo. Backcutting the valves is an easy few HP a lot of folk don't know about. You can also put a little swirl on the back of the valves with heavy grit sandpaper prior to doing the back cut. I like to get the roughs out of the combustion chambers too, esp. around the plug. I just did a set of LT1 heads for a guy, waiting for him to put it back to gether and report - those are the absolute best heads on the planet

Yep, that was a great job that fellow did on rebuilding the LN3. What I got most from it, is that the most I'd be likely to do is cylinder head work - I got to be expert at it. Re-worked heads, clean the exhaust restriction out the rear manifold, upgrade the injectors and do a little programming. I used David Vizard's techniques. I'd imagine I can get it close to 200 HP.

Yes, John Banner at FIC sold me bosch's I used on my corvette. The junk set I put in the Reat today were from a local craiglister who claimed they were good injectors. The engine wouldn't even idle with them unless I revved it. I felt the exh manifold and two of the cyls weren't firing at all and a third was barely warm. I have a spare LN3 I'll someday pull the heads from and do a porting and valve job on it and clear the restriction from the rear exh manifold, that should help alot. I wonder what the largest valves I could get to go into a stock LN3 head.... For those interested, this dude did a lot of work https://www.a-body.net/forums/showthread.php?2944-Series-I-3800-LN3-performance-build

Thanks alot. I just went and put a rag under the thing, relieved the pressure at the schrader and pulled it off and later mopped up the gas puddle in the manifold. Woo hoo, I put new old 2001 Bosch injectors from a ford explorer in it, and it ran like shhhhttttt. So, I put the original injectors back in, on a second disassembly process. Yes I like doing things twice, sometimes four times. Lesson I knew long ago, never use ford parts in a GM car, I guess I had to relearn that. Well, at least I cleaned the old injectors and put new o-rings on them. I smelled a little gas ever since I got the car 2 years ago, so maybe I actually accomplished something today. The stock injectors have four tiny holes in them, so maybe they're not all that bad but I wish they were more than 18.55 lbs/hr. I think 22 would be optimal

Hey, I want to change my injectors, can I just remove the fuel pump fuse and start the engine, to bleed the pressure out of the fuel lines ? Thanks. !!

Good job. I would have worried about the cut end of the bolt having becomed weakened from cutting on it, the heat... so when I put it in the hole in the freeze plug, the J at the end of the bolt would have just bent off or chunked off under the stress. glad that didn't happen for you, excellent write-up, and thank you.

Save the old relay(s), bench test secondary circuit under load and look for drop in current, to verify. Alternatively some funk in the primary circ. That would acknowledge the issue was in the relay, and could be useful info. Possibly as the contacts heat up, the point gap resistance increases

No, I'm openly a Farrah fan !!

Terrific. I can take down the Farrah Fawcett poster from inside my closet door and put one of these in its place.

Some many years ago I was coming back late on I35 in my 1997 SC Riviera, and there was this little ricer car in front of me, taunting the camaro that was also in front of me, for a little action. The camaro driver would have no part of it, the ricer eventually passed and went on ahead. So, I stepped on it and caught up to him in a flash and did the same taunts. Whammo, pedal to the metal. He couldn't keep up, but then suddenly he got a little boost, no doubt, nitrous. He steamed ahead, passing me in the right lane but just 2 lengths after he passed - puff !! Mucho white smoke out his tailpipe as he suddenly lost speed. Lesson - if you run nitrous, don't juice it for too long !! Those Rivieras, 96-98 are a dream car to me, especially if you put an undersized pulley on the SC !! The world is safe now, my car is powered by an LN3.

Plus, I'd use an extra couple million to engineer a kit with a drop-in Series II SC motor on a 4T-65E, and hire software guys to create drop-in PCM and ECM to go with it. Then, mustangs, corvettes, ricers, etc. will learn some RESPECT !!

If I win the lottery, I'll seriously consider going around the country and buying up all the cheap Reattas, then get some land with outbuildings and hire a crew to part all of them out and warehouse the parts. Then, there will be fewer Reatta's around which should drive up the price of each remaining one in existence, while providing a super warehouse of parts !!

Thanks yea'all. Its acting as if some amount of oil is puddling up or seeping, as one wrote above. For if it merely sits overnight or for 2-3 days, the blue smoke doesn't happen. What i could do, is let it sit for a couple weeks, and run it 1/2 the distance it drives before the smoke quits. Then, pull all the plugs and inspect to determine which cylinder the oil's burning in based on plug appearance. Maybe there's a bad stem seal on a valve, but given the angle of the heads its unlikely to me that oil could get into the space btw the guide and valve stem - it would have to climb up the guide, against gravity. another possibility is the tappet oiling system bleeds down over time and when started, more oil is getting squirted towards one of the stem seals than the others, until those galleries in the oiling system get fully pumped up. I've seen many times some lifters get more oil than others for whatever reasons on most engines , due mostly to the nature and geometry of the oiling system. another possibility might be a hose in the PCV system, in which oil puddles in a hose over time and then gets sucked in at startup and blue smoke comes out until its all been burned. Or maybe its somehow leaking into the emission control vacuum cannister and blue smoke comes until it gets evacuated from there after startup. I was just wondering if anyone else may have noticed a puddling potential anywhere in the PCV or other emission control hoses, etc. As for the recommendation to run transmission fluid - yes I know from my days as chemist at Lubrizol that all of the transmission oil packages contain what is known as a seal-swell additive. I'm hesitant to run that because there are many seals in the engine and once you swell them, that's all you get - one swell spell. Transmission seals are made of a particular type of polymer that is engineered to withstand constant exposure seal-swell additives, including those based on sulfolene-derived intermediates, which many are, and that's no secret. But I lack knowledge that all seals in the engine were engineered to be exposed to seal-swelling additives and remain apprehensive of using the trans fluid in the crankcase. I bet the answer to this is relatively simple, I'm hoping its just the geometry of a hose which can be remedied by bending whatever hose it might be, a diferent angle to prevent the puddling. Or, if its the vacuum cannister that would be seemingly easy. Maybe I need to change the PCV valve - I have a new one I got from Ronnie but read horror stories about the existing grommet around the PCV valve crumbling when one removes the PCV valuve, and am not in the mood for any car repair at the moment !! Hey, how hard is it to change the grommet that the PCV valve sits in ? Am I overly-worrisome ? Is it an easy grommet swap ?

This is weird, but if my '90 sits for two weeks, when I start it up and drive it away, I get blue smoke out the tailpipe for about half a minute, or 500 feet of driving. Then, the blue smoke goes away. This happened last summer when I had the car jacked up and was doing the struts. It was blue smoke when I got it running again. Then, a couple days ago, except this time the car wasn't jacked up. It had only been sitting in the garage. I started it and drove and noticed, a moderate amount of blue smoke. But the blue smoke stopped after about 500 feet of driving, just like the first time it happened last summer. So, I'm wondering what the mechanism might be. Is it an oil ring ? Or is there some place in the motor that oil seeps to, and accumulates ? It doesn't seem likely that it'd be a valve guide seal, but I admit I don't have a clue. Any thoughts appreciated......... The motor only has 80l on it.

I wonder how strong JB Weld really is. Could it be possible to sandpaper the entire interior cup of the freeze plug that's exposed, until its all shiny metal ? Then, wipe with a toluene, or Gumout-soaked rag to get the residual grit / gunk out of there. Once the freeze plug surface is shiny clean, then take whip up a big slug of JB Weld, and fill the freeze plug interior space with it almost entirely, placing a grade 8 3/8" bolt in the center of the JB, and let it cure a couple days. Or use a grade 8, 1/4" bolt, or whatever. If JB binds to the metal strongly, I'd imagine it'd then be easy to get a really beefy pry bar over the head of that bolt. the bolt might not want to maintain itself perpendicuarly but could be possible to fashion a loop on the end of a coat hanger wire and run it down from above the engine, so as to hold the bolt in proper orientation during the curing of the JB. The threads on the bolt might be good to grab the JB pretty well. But maybe also include a nut on the end of the bolt, wherein the nut has been ground to half its original thickness. That would give more grab on the bulk of the epoxy. Again, thinking off the top of my head, thought I'd share. Worst case, the JB wouldn't be strong enough when force is applied to the bolt head with pry bar and the bolt would pull out.

That was the predominant reason I bought mine. The undercarriage and engine compartment looked showroom new. That was September 2015 and I knew absolutely nothing about the Reatta. Bought it around 7 pm and drove off. Tried to turn on the headlights but the switch was broken. It took me about 15 minutes to find how to open the gas tank door. I'd just figured, if the undercarriage, engine compartment, etc were so nice, I could handle fixing all the other little crap. My my, I've learned so much. And have you all to thank for your help too. I can't thank you enough, thank you again.

I think it depends on what one intends to do with the vehicle. If the goal is to drive it around, I don't think mileage matters much, because of the age of these vehicles by now. Like, are the electronics, Teves, and other systems and features any more reliable on a 30 year old car with 10k miles, than the same one that's been driven 80k miles ? Rubber gaskets, seals, etc. deteriorate with time regardless of whether the vehicle is driven or not, and sometimes not driving a vehicle can be worse than driving it. If on the other hand the goal is to put the car in a personal or other museum, or buy it to leave as part of an estate in the hopes these cars will become desirable as a 68 Camaro Rally Sport someday, lower mileage might add a little value. I just drive mine, I can't take it with me, and have no intention of starting a collection. I bought my 90 2 years ago with 78k on it, which I thought was reasonable and the car only ran me 2500 babelbucks. What's mileage worth ? For one extreme, pick a highly sought car like a Hemi 'Cuda and look at what mileage is worth on those. Then, pick another mediumly-sought car and do the same. Then, ask - "who of this generation of so-called millenialls is going to want this car?" My guess is, nobody is going to ever want to pay a premium on a Buick Reatta that they intend drive around in - so the market is limited to museums or personal collectors. Millenialls won't buy these cars, this generation can't even change a windshield wiper and Reattas need maintenance ! I think a car with less than 10k miles on it is probably worth $5k more than one with more than 20k mi but the market is very limited. Am I good at rambling on and saying nothing, or what !! ?? Ok, time for another cup of coffee

Too bad you can't controllably freeze the local area so it pops out on its own, like using liquid nitrogen. I wonder what the factory pop-out spec is on a freeze plug, Another wild and crazy thought is to drill a second hole, and put thick screws in each of the two holes. Unplug your Lincoln welder and hook each pos and neg to one and the other screw. Then pump 50 amps through the freeze plug in the region between the two screws, which will likely fry a hole big enough to get a long screwdriver through. Third wild and crazy idea, make the block the cathode in an anodizing circuit, and hook the positive pole of the battery to the freeze plug itself. Up the amps and the freeze plug will dissolve around its perimeter - depending on the alloy of which the freeze plug is composed. If possible, obtain another "stock" freeze plug and check its reduction potential on the bench vs. the block alloy. My guess is that the freeze plug is higher up in the electromotive series than cast iron. There definitely would be anodic dissolution around its perimeter where it contacts the block. Hmm, let me do a search on "anodic freeze plug dissolution"

Thanks alot ya'all

Mine's currently got the green stuff in it, but its time for a change. I'd go with green again, but am leaning towards DexCool. Does it matter ? Thank you

As Mr. Padgett suggested..... Pull the air intake big black inlet tube off of the throttle blade housing, remove the honeycomb screen, and maybe take 2-3 ounces of gas in a cup and throw it sideways into the manifold, holding the throttle blade open. Then try to start it. If you have spark as you suggest, the engine should run for a couple seconds. If that makes it fire up, look for the electronic reason why the injectors arent' getting energized, probably just a broken wire somewhere, fuse, etc.