Are the two related? Beginning of season Reatta woes

[doity]

OK, got my 88' out of mothballs today. Got her washed and she hadn't even lost any air pressure since putting her in storage in Oct. or so. Anyway, I did notice that she was running a little sluggish and there was a bit of a racket coming from the engine compartment. A rattle or similar sound.

After driving it for a hour or so and after making a couple stops she stalled. The 'check enigne' light did not stay on, nor were there any messages such as "Electrical control problems detected" or whatever the one that is typical with stalls and breakdowns. But the yellow and red warning lights side by side on the dash did come on right when the engine stalled during driving allowing me to coast to a stop. Then after some hesitation the car would start but not right away.

Finally get her home and leave the engine idling for a few minutes to see what would happen and the car kept running but I noticed what turned out to be a good sized pool of anti-freeze pooling up after investigating the rattling coming from underneath the car. Quickly turned the car off and laid down some kitty litter to sop up the antifreeze.

I would suspect a faulty water pump but could this cause the stalling? Maybe the engine detects a coolant problem and shuts itself down to protect itself? Anyone else ever experience similar results?

Thanks for any tips. I was so happy to be out driving the Reatta today but after years of ownership no matter how low miles the car is (mine has 69k) a couple issues always seem to pop-up every year. I think the car gods do this to keep us on our toes :mad:

[Guest Mc_Reatta]

Stalling and not restarting for awhile sounds like it could be early thermal failure of the ICM or crank sensor. Neither sets a trouble code.

Rattle, especially at idle, could be failure of the harmonic balancer.

[Ronnie]

I would remove the drive belt and start the engine.

If the rattle is completely gone the noise is likely to be caused by the waterpump since you say it is leaking

If the sound of the rattle only changes but you can still hear it the noise is likely caused by the harmonic balancer.

I agree with McReatta that the stalling is probably caused by the ICM or the crankshaft sensor. If you see green or gray goo coming out of the ICM it is likely to be going bad. Every thing you need to fix any of those problems is in The Reatta Store at great prices.

Here is how a bad ICM will look inside. Sometimes it will leak out onto the sides of the ICM when it goes bad..

[padgett]

Harmonic balancer will usually be noisiest at idle, if bad you should be able to feel cracks/missing rubber. Is one reason I run cars about 10% cooler than spec.

[doity]

Harmonic balancer will usually be noisiest at idle, if bad you should be able to feel cracks/missing rubber. Is one reason I run cars about 10% cooler than spec.

Turns out the mechanic replaced the water pump and serpentine belt. He thinks that maybe some coolant was getting on the Crank Position Sensor and that was what was causing the problems with the engine cutting out. Drives fine now:)