Leaderboard

Triage is good. First run a jumper straight to the solenoid and see if anything happens. Then trace forward (nothing happens) or back (if starter responds) until you gat a change..

Supposed to be clear down to 30's tonight. First time this year. Two cat night.

That garage is just perfect for a lift - or two.

My climate is such that my "sunshine" cars (four including the Reatta) sit garaged for about 6 months out of the year, though I do use the Reatta sparingly over the winter. I use a combination of what I read above - full tank of gas with stabilizer - battery maintainer - start the car periodically and let it run for 15+ minutes with the A/C on - car cover - and over inflate the tires by 15+/- psi to help avoid flat spots on the tires.

I agree with you MarkN. I guess one side effect is it does keep the price of them from inflating a ton. Seems like some other cars become overly sought after by collectors and then they go for ridiculous amounts of money comparatively. The Honda S2000 I think is a good example. Those go for crazy amounts of money. I guess that's bad if you want to sell, but good if you want to own one.

Believe me, many things like that cause me to do my best Homer Simpson "DOH!" No worries and mystery solved👍

Thank you. That is the original style chain dampener and the chain appears to be the correct Morse brand (it is stamped on some of the side plates). How many miles on the engine? This is what the original should have looked like:

You can see what's left of the tensioner. The spring is laying on top of the oil pan.

You know, I get really tired of automotive “journalists” with their snarky reviews of the Reatta. The car does have some shortcomings, but are easily outweighed by the advantages. The YouTube reviews, with an audio track, have much voice inflection, irritating irrelevant comment, and generally poor content. Clearly a situation where they need to boost their egos by putting someone/something else down. Pathetic.

Yes, you are missing the gear behind the cam sprocket. It lines up dot to dot just like a cam to crank setup. I have enclosed two photos of the bare cam and with the balance shaft gear in place. The biggest issue I have with this is it is unlikely the cam sprocket and crank sprocket line up properly. A straight edge across the two should be flush with each other. The whole reason the 3800 has such a skinny timing chain is because the balance shaft drive was added which took up real estate for the chain and sprocket. I see yours is an '88 which has a slightly different thickness (thicker) drive flange that bears up against the block where the later cams have a little thinner flange with a spacer shim washer behind it. They are interchangeable but the early cam must be installed bare and the later, 89 and 90, must have the shim washer.