Leaderboard

The problem with the cooling fan control turned out to be an easy fix. The electric thermostat switch (on right in photo) I added to control the fans had unscrewed slightly so it wasn't making good contact with the engine. With it screwed out, heat from the engine wasn't transferring to the switch. The switch screws into the head of the bolt that holds the thermostat housing down. I probably hadn't screwed it in very tight because it is only a 1/8" diameter screw made of brass and I didn't want to take a chance on breaking it off. The cooling fans are now working as intended again..

Brought the car home yesterday. I installed a stock ATYH memcal on the Moates adapter and my custom chip on the opposite side, same configuration as what had failed but with an untouched memcal. It started and ran but with the return of the cold start instability. It seems to be self correcting as it did before and it runs flawlessly once it warms a bit. This seems to confirm the previous memcal was damaged by being modified but only the passage of time and miles will confirm.

A community at another project had an auto detailer detailing a car at their house and one of my neighbors called his tel # and made an appointment for her car and my wife spoke to her and she was quite pleased with his cleaning. My wife had him detail her 2 year Subaru Forester and he charged her $120 and she was quite pleased also and he did do a really good job. I had him look at the Reatta and I requested for him not to use ceramic coating on my carnauba paste wax and he quoted me $80. He spent 2 hours on the interior and trunk and he looked under my hood which I had spent time cleaning almost everything previously which he spent maybe 20 minutes on and the Reatta was very clean plus he removed a stain in the carpet. I was quite pleased also so I gave him a $20 tip. BTW thus far 6 neighbors have made appointments with him.

I think the risk is worth the reward as the Reatta is such a joy to drive.

I’m trying to get over my fear of the Reatta having a sudden unexpected breakdown, so I threw caution to the wind and took it on a trip up to the mountains Wednesday. 3 hours of highway driving followed by 2 hours of steep winding mountain roads and the car performed like a champ. Sitting at idle in an overlook the temp gets up to 208 and the highest it’s gotten sitting in stop and go traffic was 214. I think the factory default setting for high fan is 216 . It seems to cool back down quickly once moving along again.