What did you do with your Reatta today.

[DAVES89]

Today Bob and I removed the dash so that Kendall can run down the short I have in the 'vert. he has every confidence that he can get this done. Took us about 90 minutes to get the dash out. Although I cheated by already having the top pad and console out to make the dash removal go a little faster.  

[DAVES89]

Today Bob and I reinstall the dash.

 Kendall found the short. It was in the loom of wires that run in front of the engine from the dash to the cornering lamps. In this case the passenger side. He also closely inspected the taillight bulbs and found 4 that were "bad" The filiment in these 4 bulbs were touching each other and didn't look right, so out they went.

 We did set the dash in place so we could reconnect the junction box of wires and then test our work. We ran all the tests, high/low beams, taillights, brake lights, running lights, fog lights, and directionals.

All good...

[2seater]

Wow, what a process. Hats off to the gumption to trace that spaghetti around the car, whew. Any hint what caused a short inside a loomed wire harness? Was it up front below the radiator area?

[DAVES89]

Yeah. Don't use a self drilling screw into the support for the radiator without checking to see if the loom is on the other side. It just nicked a tan wire and was enough to cause a dead short that was virtually untraceable. We were mounting the two relays for the after market headlight relay harness. The leads were too short for both headlights so we cheated and installed the relays as close as we could to make the wires be long enough without splicing. The icing on the cake? The harness was no good either, right out of the box. 

 We spent about 20 hours with Kendal's, Bob's and my time running tests looking for shorts, disconnecting modules, disconnecting pigtails to the taillights, and front cornering lights, headlights, etc. We even removed the seats and redid the splices on both sides. And then removed the dash and traced wires from there, which is how we found it. 

 It was a bitch replacing the dash because we had on pigtail that had a 8 pin female and three pin mail but was a perfect match for each other. Turned out to be the Bose 3 pin pigtail not the Reatta pigtail [remember the Reatta uses a lot of parts from the Riv] so it burned up the stereo [at the drivers side rear as it gave power to the speaker wires because Bose speakers are powered]. Fortunately I have an extra stereo in my parts bin and can be running tomorrow. 

 But what a nightmare. All for a defective after market harness and a self tapping screw in the wrong place. 

[Ronnie]

Most people would have given up and never found that short. As you have said before, a lot of problems can be traced back to the last thing you did but in this case who would have suspected a screw holding that harness causing so much trouble. Glad you got it fixed.

[DAVES89]

Can't drive a car with no taillights, so we had no choice.

[buggzy]

I washed, clay barred, and waxed the whole car today! After doing so I realized there’s quite a few paint chips and there’s dirt and marks on the front bumper area I can’t get off with the supplies I had. It still looks a lot better than before. Here are a few pics.

[Ronnie]

Great looking car. I really like the white. You took some beautiful photos. I didn't know PA was so flat.

[buggzy]

21 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Great looking car. I really like the white. You took some beautiful photos. I didn't know PA was so flat.

 Thanks, Ronnie! I love the white too, especially since it doesn’t really show any scratches. Also PA isn’t that flat, it’s just that this was at someone’s farm and it looks flat.

[ship]

Not so much as what I did TO my Reatta today but what I did FOR my Reatta.  Having sold the Riviera a while back I got rid of it's igloo and rearranged the Reatta igloo on my property.  I added slate pavers (they're actually rubber!) for a tire track driveway and sodded the area.

[Ronnie]

Looks great Dave. Did you have to dig out the grass to put down the pavers or just put them on top of the grass?

[ship]

I didn't have any grass there because the Riviera igloo previously took up most of that spot.  I had the Reatta igloo and the Riviera igloo hooked/stung together lengthwise making the igloo basically 10'X36'.  Reatta igloo is what's left at 10'X16'.  I did prep/loosen up the soil though before laying down the sod.  

[Ronnie]

Thanks Dave. I need to do something similar with the pavers at my daughters townhouse so she has an extra parking spot. Where did you get the rubber pavers?

[ship]

7 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Thanks Dave. I need to do something similar with the pavers at my daughters townhouse so she has an extra parking spot. Where did you get the rubber pavers?

I went through Lowes online.  The ones I bought are 16"X16", grey, reversible with a different pattern on the other side, and a little over $5 per, if I remember correctly.  Lowes originally charged me for shipping but then rescinded that charge....don't know why but did not question their motive for doing so.

[Ronnie]

Thanks. I'll check it out.

[Ronnie]

I drove the Tail of the Dragon, Hwy 129 today and I encountered a problem. I was driving with the shifter in 2nd gear, accelerating up to about 2500-3000 RPM and then backing off which is normal for driving on the Dragon. About half way into the 11 miles of curves to Deal's Gap my check engine light came on solid and I got an engine problem warning on the CRT. The engine seemed to be running fine. When I got to the Dragon for photos at Deal's Gap I checked the codes. I had a code E063, small EGR circuit. I cleared the codes and the CEL went off and stayed off. However, we stopped at a fast food joint on the way home and when I went to start the engine it ran real rough and died. On starting again I held the gas pedal down about half way and it seemed to clear out. It felt like starting a flooded engine but I don't think it was. As I headed out of the parking lot it ran a little rough but when I hit the highway everything was back to normal and it ran fine the rest of the way home, about 35 miles. I think I probably still have a problem but didn't investigate it when I got home because driving the dragon with over 300 sharp curves in 11 miles wore me out. I will check it out tomorrow. Any ideas what might be going on?

 

[rogold]

   Yesterday I fixed a leaky washer fluid problem. Turned out to be the check valve in the fluid line coming out of the pump. Since none were available locally, I epoxied the body of the valve back together.

   Since i had pulled the air filter housing to fix the washer leak, I went ahead and pulled the screen off the throttle body, pulled the MAF sensor out and cleaned out both with the appropriate cleaners.

   Next I pulled the Idle Air Control Valve to clean the seat. The process went smooth until I tried to reinstall the IAC. The O-ring had expanded from age and broke when I tried to install. Ended up finding a suitable O-ring at Menards of all places. Reinstalled much easier with the new O-ring.

   Running out of things to do, I decided to tackle a new power steering pump. I have had a new pump sitting on my shelf for about a year now,staring at me every time I walk by 😉. I think my car still had the original pump with 93k miles and was starting to sound a little noisy. Surprisingly I had the correct puller to get the pulley off and pressed back on. Pump was a fairly easy swap. Also flushed out all the old fluid (pretty nasty looking compared to the new stuff) and bled the air with no issues. The engine is noticeably quieter now.

 

 

[2seater]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I drove the Tail of the Dragon, Hwy 129 today and I encountered a problem. I was driving with the shifter in 2nd gear, accelerating up to about 2500-3000 RPM and then backing off which is normal for driving on the Dragon. About half way into the 11 miles of curves to Deal's Gap my check engine light came on solid and I got an engine problem warning on the CRT. The engine seemed to be running fine. When I got to the Dragon for photos at Deal's Gap I checked the codes. I had a code E063, small EGR circuit. I cleared the codes and the CEL went off and stayed off. However, we stopped at a fast food joint on the way home and when I went to start the engine it ran real rough and died. On starting again I held the gas pedal down about half way and it seemed to clear out. It felt like starting a flooded engine but I don't think it was. As I headed out of the parking lot it ran a little rough but when I hit the highway everything was back to normal and it ran fine the rest of the way home, about 35 miles. I think I probably still have a problem but didn't investigate it when I got home because driving the dragon with over 300 sharp curves in 11 miles wore me out. I will check it out tomorrow. Any ideas what might be going on?

 

My guess is the heat from a bit of spirited driving may be sticking one of the pintle valves in the EGR. If the smallest one is stuck partially open it will definitely give a poor idle or cause an idle stall. The nice thing is the whole EGR assembly comes apart on the bench for cleaning and testing. A pretty simple device really.

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, 2seater said:

My guess is the heat from a bit of spirited driving may be sticking one of the pintle valves in the EGR. If the smallest one is stuck partially open it will definitely give a poor idle or cause an idle stall. The nice thing is the whole EGR assembly comes apart on the bench for cleaning and testing. A pretty simple device really.

I think you are probably right. I was watching the coolant temp and it never got over 185 but I'll bet accelerating hard out of the corners for about 50 yards then using the engine for breaking into the next corner was giving the EGR a real workout. Doing that constantly for about 100 times might have overheated it. It might be hard on the EGR but it sure is a lot of fun. 🙂

 

I should have mentioned earlier that after we left the Burger King we had to stop at a dozen or more red lights and the engine idled perfectly. After the engine was cooled down tonight I went out and started the engine to see if it would stall or run rough again It started and ran normally. It could have been just a glitch brought on by the way I was running it in 2nd gear on all those curves. If it happens again I will pull the EGR off and give it a good cleaning and check it out. Tomorrow I intend to use diagnostics to cycle each one of the EGR solenoids to make sure they respond properly.

 

On the Dragon there about a half dozen guys set up on the side of the road that are taking pictures you can purchase on their website. They take thousands of photos of cars each day. They took about a dozen of my Reatta. Below is one of the proofs. I could download the full size high resolution copy for $9 without their watermark but I don't think any of the ones they took today looked good enough to pay for.

 

 

[Ronnie]

14 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Tomorrow I intend to use diagnostics to cycle each one of the EGR solenoids to make sure they respond properly.

I checked out the EGR solenoids today. They all seemed to be working properly. When the small solenoid was activated with the engine running the engine started to stumble just like it did at the Burger King yesterday. If I mashed on the gas it would clear out until it returned to idle. Felt just like a flooded engine. Activating the other two solenoids would cause the engine to stumble so bad it would die in just a few seconds. I didn't try mashing on the gas with either of those two solenoids open. I was afraid it could cause a backfire that might do some damage. If I encounter this problem again I will pull the EGR and clean it.