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Welcome to the forum! Probably the wrong car for you since you need a dependable daily driver. Reattas are good cars but they are also 30 years old so it's not easy to find someone who knows how to work on them. Moisture inside the car is a pretty good indication that you might have electrical problems down the road if you buy it. A lot of the wires run through the floorboards beneath the seats where they can get wet causing bad connections.

I personally would not buy this particularly as a daily driver.

Awesome work, guys! Another approach to the lack of OEM spec threaded height above perch, for those with access to a machine lathe, is to turn down the existing threads on the KYB or Monroe insert, and re-thread to a smaller size. Then fab a screw-on adapter with the desired overall length, thread, and OD for the OEM-style unthreaded part. NB, pad the lathe jaws so you don't scratch the shaft, and leave a clean fillet at the base of the smaller, newly threaded shaft so as to prevent cracking at its base.

@alchemist: the threads were machined. Side by side assembly comparison: top: OEM fully extended (held extended by clamp.) Distance from top of sway bar mount to upper perch: 17.00” center: OEM body w/ Monroe insert. Distance from top of sway bar mount to upper perch: 16.125” bottom: OEM body w/ KYB insert. Distance from top of sway bar mount to upper perch: 15.75” the Monroe insert cartridge is approximately .125” taller than the KYB. Due to design differences, the KYB also has a shorter piston stroke for the identical application as the Monroe. as a side note, the Monroe gas charged unit comes compressed. The unit I received did not automatically extend once rotated to “unlock” from shipping state, and seems to have compression resistance similar to a hydraulic shock vs. substantial resistance on the KYB gas charged unit. Maybe the Monroe unit is faulty? the threaded height above the perch is a problem for assembly and there are two options to address: 1. Extend the thread with coupler and threaded rod which also raises the upper strut mounting perch. This also addresses the problem of enough piston length to extend through the upper rubber mount stack up. 2. Use a spacer under the insert cartridge as indicated by @alchemist and use the weld-on threaded adapter and threaded sleeve approach. The weld on adapter would be needed to extend the length of the shock body to allow for the 1.5” spacer insert. The OEM strut body is not long enough to accommodate.

The only part that can be programmed is the prom. The ECM itself does not get reflashed or anything like that. Only the removable blue thing under the cover gets moved to the new one. I believe in GM speak it is a Memcal. The now one should have that space empty. The Memcals are getting harder to find so any unused ones should be saved. It will have a four letter code indicating the calibration level.

… a Grand National going up Pikes Peak 😝?