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After almost 30 years of owning my '89 Reatta and not needing one, I decided to find a service manual based on the Forum's discussions on troubleshooting et al. When I lifted the shipping box, I thought that my wife must have bought something like a brick so I opened the box and there it was, a '90 service manual. Without turning a page I was impressed. The size immediately reminded me of a telephone directory for NYC so it must have everything and then some on the '90 Reatta. I thumbed through the manual and was overwhelmed with the quantity of electrical diagrams which comprised at least 1/3 of the manual. Realizing that deciphering those diagrams was going to be a challenge, I immediately started to look at the nut and bolts writeups. Then I decided to take a nap and try to remember when I enjoyed getting my hands dirty.............

Back in the day, I too carried a Service Manual in my car when I drove from Illinois to California in my red '64 Corvette Coupe 45 years ago. The coupe has no trunk but a large area behind the seats so I managed to cram into that space a hydraulic floor jack, tool box, misc fluids and 2 beautiful cats in a carrier. Almost forgot, my wife was included but not in the storage area instead in the passenger seat.............. She was a saint as the Corvette had factory side pipes which were kind of loud................

It is intimidating and as a matter of fact I have a hard time with it, so my first step is to just replace the problem part with a tested used part off the shelf. This has served me well for the last 17 years. Kendall [my mechanic friend] has cracked it open a few times for reference, but as I always say unless the wiring has been tampered with it has always been an end component. I do clean and use dielectric grease on the connectors when I have a component to replace.

Handling river rock is a bear. I've done it around a portion of my driveway and hauled the rock via my utility trailer. Even with 2,000 lb capacity, I hauled several loads. This was years ago, so I don't recall all the details. However, the rock became matted with leaf debris, tiny sticks, and run-off sediment over the years. Leaf blower didn't remove the debris. I ended up removing the rock and now its in a heap in an area on my property where it is out-of-the way, but still visible. It doesn't degrade or turn into organic matter! When I removed the rock, because it was matted with debris, each shovel load was washed in a bucket by my wife (yes, she is still my wife) and this took many man hours (and woman hours) to remove, wash, haul and pile up. Crazy, i know.