Jim

Jim, I am the assistant director of the Reatta div. and my only job is to plan the Rendezvous. I wrote a piece in the last newsletter but you may have missed it. The Rendezvous this year will be on Friday at about noon for lunch and this year we will also combine the Rendezvous with the R-Div annual meeting. We will meet in a park not too far from the host hotel and will have a catered lunch. I have not picked a park yet but will very soon and it will be in the next newsletter which comes out before the National meet and it will also be posted somewhere at the host hotel. Everyone in the area with a Reatta or an interest in Reattas is welcome wether or not you are members of the R-Div. but I will need to know who will be attending so I can order the food. I can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com More to follow as time progresses

The unit I sent you was a good one that I had tested in a working car and both the lights went out. I think initially that one had some codes in it but I put it in a car that the rest of the system was known to be good and then drove the car over 18 mph which cleared the codes and then both lights went out. As you mentioned, I would also assume there is an internal ground through the pins but I do know the mounting bracket is grounded because that is the ground I use when programming transmitters.

I try and always be correct in my spelling and grammar. Very often I will type out a message in my email program which has a spell check and I then read the message a second time to make sure it is correct. I was using my laptop and typed out my previous message directly. Thanks for pointing out I misspelled Cesspool. As I was driving home we stopped in Abbotsford WI to get some gas. I just shook my head at what I saw. Here was a guy wearing a Packers jacket and a Dale Earnhardt Jr. hat. Jr. seems like a really nice kid and a good clean driver. Packer fans and Jr. fans are very similar. I am told the word fan comes from fanatic and here are two extreme examples. There is more to life but not in these two camps.

Friday I was in the Chicago area and the cheapest I saw there was $ 3.39 and some places it was $ 3.79 for regular. Jon, Again I went very close to your home as I went up US 20 through Hanover Park. I had your package right next to me on the seat and wanted to deliver it personally but time was getting late for me to go and pick up a parts car. I ended up mailing it from Beaver Dam WI on Saturday.

Probably just warm weather. I think it says in the manual, if your CD doesn't play to warm up the CD and try again. I have done this successfully.

I wish I could have been there, it sounds like it is/was a very good time. Unfortunately, as they say, "day late and a dollar short". Friday morning I had breakfast in the East Troy area ( about 16 miles away )and later that day I picked up a Reatta parts car about 50 miles from you. Saturday morning I was visiting my brother in Fond du Lac and the rest of Saturday and today I am in the heart of the sesspool of yellow and green visiting my son. On a different note---- Al's auto parts at the intersection of US 45 and W36 near the huge landfill in Franklin, has a '90 silver Reatta with the light grey interior. The vent windows are still there as is the right headlight assy. Both door panels looked good as was the non 16W seat on the passenger side. There are a lot of other parts also. This is a yard where you pull your own parts but he is limited for space so all the cars are stacked and there is a car on top of the Reatta. The doors could be opened but were stuck for some reason which is why I did not get the LH door panel. I did get the IPC and the headlight switch for $ 60 and he wants $ 75 for the headlight with the motor. I mention these items so you have an idea of his prices. Jim 4

I have been a judge at several BCA meets and points will definitely be taken for the wrong coil. In this same area, the correct spark plug wires for '88-90 Reattas are a medium grey, numbered and lettered in white and with the word Packard on them.

I have a good used original available. I can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com

Could be the headlight control module. It is located under the windshield washer bottle. I do have a good one and can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com

I also thought of recharging the accumulators but not sure how it would be done. Here are some picture of an accumulator cut in half. I am guessing the factory pressurized the accumulator from the top and the welded it shut. Pix 1 shows the bladder in the bottom half. Pix 2 shows the top. It looks like inside the hex there might be a slug inserted and then spot welded as shown in pix 3. In pix 3 you can see a tiny hole with a blue ring around it from being very hot. The metal piece on top with the hex is also welded to the housing.

In the picture the body of the handle is painted to match the color of your car. Something very strange about that site. To the best of my knowledge the door handles and vent windows have been out of production for many years which is why for a few years the vent windows were selling for over $ 1000. I went to gmpartsdirect and put in the p/n for the vent window and it came up unavailable. I went back to this site and put in the p/n for the vent window and it came up as being available but at a different price than when you click on # 2 of the page you posted. Same web site two different prices. Before sending any money I would contact them by phone and make sure they actually have the parts. The picture by the way is right out of a "Motor" crash book and not out of the GM parts book. These parts are listed in the GM parts book in grp 10 ( page 10-44 in my book )

'88-90 Reatta's are the only car that used that handle. Reattas in '91 and Chevrolet used a similar handle on a couple of their cars in the late '80s but they did not have the extra mounting on the back side for a small switch that feeds the body computer ( BCM ) to control some of the functions of the lights, keyless entry and the security system. I have a good handle and probably the right color for your car. I can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com

It is most likely the brake hose to that wheel that is internally collapsed like Barney says. It will look good on the outside but bad on the inside. Been there, done that.

Junk yards are actually not a very good source. A couple of weeks ago I went to several yards and picked up 9 accumulators. I then tested them one at a time on my car and checked for the number of pumps it took for the red light to come on. Out of the 9 I had one that took 4 pumps which would be average since a new accumulator takes about 7. I had one that came on in three pumps and all the rest came on in two or less. I saved the 4 pump and the 3 pump and threw the rest away. I then took my sawzall and cut one in half. It was just a steel housing with a rubber bladder inside. Even on the accumulator that was totally out of nitrogen I could not push a rod into the bottom hole so there must have been a little pressure in there. After I cut one open I could then push the bladder into the housing. If a person did have some sort of pump that went to 2600 pounds you could measure the amount of fluid that goes in and compare it to a new one. The more fluid the accumulator takes the worse it is so you would first have to know how much a new one holds. One tip if you do go to junk yards, if there is a white label on the accumulator it is a replacement and the odds of it being good are better than an original one although a while back I did get one with the white label on it and it was no good.

If the bottom two sections are bent you will have to replace the whole assembly. I will send you an email. Jim

Mitel? I think we used to use their touch tone converters on our SXS switches and also used Mitel for coin control functions.

I believe the CRTC only serves as an interface to the CRT/touch screen. You are probably right about the horizontal oscillator being the problem but the horizontal and vertical circuits are wholly inside the CRT unit. I have both good CRT/touch screens and CRTC available and I can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com

Mike, I am not sure what an antenna "mask" is, <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> but if you are looking for a replacement "mast" for your antenna from GM you get one from a Caprice and the part number is 22038195. This is just the top section and the band. To rebuild your antenna the motor needs to be good and the bottom two sections have to be good. The replacement piece you get from GM is now being made in China or someplace similar and Barney and I have discussed a couple of times that because they are cheaply made you will find where the nylon band is crimped to the top section they made it a little too big and will have to be recrimped or somehow made slightly smaller. Be careful though as the metal is very thin.

I do have a good headlight switch for your '91 Reatta. I can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com

Lots of cars used the Teves accumulator. Many large Buicks, Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, some Chryslers and a few foreign makes. Finding a good one that will take more that 4 pumps without the red light coming on is the hard part.

The sensor should read over 200K ohms. I have a good sensor and I have a very nice burgundy dash top. This is the panel that the defroster vent snaps into. I can be reached at jfinn@cpinternet.com but I will be away from home until next Monday.

My thoughts would be to pick up an IPC or a touch screen if a person could get them cheap. The only other parts to maybe get, again if you can find some cheap ones, would be the outside mirrors and vent windows because it is very easy to catch one on your garage wall when backing out. I came close twice this week. <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> The most common part to go bad in the '88-89s is the CRT and the most common part in the '90-91s is the IPC. Other than those you are probably going to have a bunch of parts sitting around and your money tied up in items on the shelf. Right now, and I think for a few years, the parts are quite plentiful because the cars are pretty old and showing up in a lot of salvage yards and private parties selling on Ebay. Yesterday I was upside down and twisted under a dash taking something out and I thought of my friends Jim Wright DMN and Nic who have a little trouble getting into these positions and I thought how lucky I am to be still able to do this. Most likely as long as I am able I will continue. I have too many parts to quit now anyway and I am leaving tomorrow for Michigan to pick up another parts car.

I went and visually compared an '88 knuckle and bearing assembly to an '89 and it looks like the hole in the knuckle where the bearing goes in is the same size. The part of the bearing race that meets the axle is thicker on the '88s to make up for the smaller axle. It looks like if a person wanted to put the larger splined axles in an '88 they would also have to add/use the '89-91 bearing assembly in their '88 knuckle. I did see another difference between the '88 and newer knuckles in that the '88 has a bolt on aluminum piece to hold the ABS wheel speed sensor whereas on the newer ones this holder is cast into the knuckle.

Greg is correct on the shaft differences. On the transaxle end the diameters are the same for all years but on the outer end, the '88 axles have a spline diameter of 1.116 inches and the '89-91 outer spline diameter is 1.413 inches. I have good used half shafts for all years.

Bill, Thank you for your offer. I am setting up the "Reatta Rendezvous' and could use some help checking out some parks. I see you are only about 10 miles from the host hotel area. I will give you a call or send you an email. Jim