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Saving Reattas from the crusher is a family project.


2seater

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I will let #1 know as I may have misunderstood and misled him about the cooler. I might just transplant the donor cooler to red as it looks pretty good at a distance.

 

 I have never fooled with the bushings before so I was just trying to determine which ones need to be done yet. I need to get the car repositioned to better see under the front. I did see where those mystery plastic covers go. All the way at the front under the front bushings.

 

What does the ignition box you wanted look like? I went to look at the cruise dump switch but my kids have all the covers back on so couldn’t see if it is broken in some way.

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When Bob and I were goofing around with the cruise he pulled the cruise switch out and "rebuilt" it by cleaning the contacts. He also jumped the cruise wire at the directional lever down to the switch and it still didn't work. It was only later that I realized that the headlight switch was no good that caused the cruise not to work. At any rate the cruise will not work at all because the cruise switch at the brake pedal is not installed and is just laying there. 

 In all my years of being on the forum I have never remembered anyone having a cruise issue that was due to a bad wire. It was always a switch, servo, or headlight switch. But Kendall [without testing] said it had to be the wire as that was his experience with Mopar cars. It doesn't apply to Reattas but as he is so knowledgeable we followed his opinion and in this case may have done more damage then fix. 

 Regarding the ignition switch, it is the black box that is on the outside of the column at the bottom of the column. I would only want it if you take the column out of the Red car because you couldn't get the cruise to work on that column and then didn't need it. As a matter of fact if you replaced the column and didn't need it I would be interested in the whole column for parts.

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On 8/19/2020 at 8:21 AM, DAVES89 said:

That is what Padgett said over "there" and I didn't argue the point. I did try it on the Red at all speeds before closed loop and the cruise comes on at least 20 miles an hour and works when the engine still shows cold on the CRT.

You are right Dave. I just tried to engage the Cruse with the engine cold this morning. I can also confirm that the cruise will work when the engine is cold and in open loop. We can lay that one to rest.

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Good info, thanks. Spent the morning at home getting parts and such plus tapped Dave’s extensive stockpile. Should get back to the red car now.

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Luckily, I have been slowly following Daves lead on stocking parts. It is now pretty plain that stocking parts for an obsolete engine isn't being done at the retail level. I have everything I need but I thought it would be beneficial to see if I could get replacements immediately. I was looking for an oil pan gasket, a water pump, timing chain and gasket set, cam sensor and magnet, plus an O2 sensor. The only thing readily available was the O2 sensor. I tried O'Reilly, Napa and Advance/CARQUEST which are with 1/2 mile of each other. I finally went to a small local place that I frequented for decades and used to have a machine shop too. I think it is a Parts Plus store or something like that and they had a pan gasket, a Rol brand, which I have not used before. I guess I will be forced to mail order everything? Ironically, a delivery guy brought a large Rock Auto box in while I was at Advance. The counter guy noticed that I noticed and said: we are a UPS drop off site now. The guy that brought the box in wasn't wearing a brown uniform ?

 

Time wasted but I did get back mid afternoon. I decided to install a small aluminum 4-pass cooler for the power steering rather than disable the donor car, which despite the stripping of parts, mostly interior, it will still run and drive. I never got the one screw out of the ICM and it finally broke off so it is back together with five fasteners to the coil pack. I swapped a couple of the firewall relays with the donor car which has all three relays with good cases that hold on the rack under the hood. A small thing, but it tidies things up. I let it idle until warm but no closed loop. O2 is dead, but doesn't register a code but the cam sensor 041 is current and history. Hoping that the 041 is why check engine and electrical problem are displayed. The red brake light stays on so will need to investigate that. I noted the power steering cooler did get warm just sitting at idle with wheels straight ahead. Grandson coming over tonight to do some shampooing?

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6 hours ago, 2seater said:

Good info, thanks. Spent the morning at home getting parts and such plus tapped Dave’s extensive stockpile. Should get back to the red car now.

Yeah I'm lighter by two transmission lines and some cradle bushing kits. I also have a new radiator in stock [just for knowledge Hal] in case you or "yours" needs one. Extra MAf sensors [7 or so] and coil packs/ignition modules. When things slow down for Bob we will be rebuilding headlight motors, and Kendall and I ABS sensor leads.

 That red brake light issue has to be either low brake fluid, the disconnected cruise switch at the brake or the e brake pedal needing to be released. It was always out before.

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I also have extra rubber brake lines including the one that goes across the back at the gas tank as well as front/rear wheel bearings. And tie rods/ball joints, struts/strut mounts. Just let me know. 

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Interesting day today after grandson came by after dinnertime last night to start shampooing the carpet. Must be getting anxious?

#2 son came by early today prior to work and reinstalled the cruise control dump valve and adjusted to the brake pedal. We installed just the bottom of the drivers seat with the intention of running around a bit to check the cruise but first we had to help it start again. I know it gets proper fuel pressure to prime and it has good spark, but it seems it doesn't get enough of a prime signal to the injectors, because just a squirt of ether and it starts and runs perfectly. Hmmm. In any case we backed it off the full length supports it has spent two weeks on and drove off down the dirt/gravel road out to the pavement. There was no passengers seat so I reclined across the floor and up the back. Interesting ride but not really uncomfortable. There is a noticeable clunk underneath from around the center of the car which I suspect is the exhaust hitting a support. There is also a high pitched screech sound from the left front that disappears in a right turn. I didn't notice that on the trip up, but then I am pretty deaf?. Anyway, we did get to try the cruise at 30 mph and we get no indicator on the ipc nor does the cruise work. I am hoping the lack of indicator light helps narrow the failure possibilities. We did check the indicator light works in test.

 

Later I investigated the trans. cooler lines and they are pretty crusty looking in a couple places. The donor car already had hose substituted so that was out and I seriously considered doing a partial hose job and add a trans. cooler but I removed them and I had the pristine lines from Dave on hand so they will be installed to keep the car stock. I had been looking for a small coolant leak near the upper radiator hose attachment to the radiator and after the run I found the radiator end tank has a small crack. The donor car has an intact radiator which appears clean inside so that was removed in preparation to transplanting to the red car. Removing the donor radiator also opens everything up for #1 son to pull the a/c lines from the compressor tomorrow. Incidentally, does anyone have success using that flubber radiator drain valve without it making a big mess? I find it to be a source of annoyance but maybe it's just me.

 

As long as the coolant has to be drained for the radiator change, I figured it is a good time to do the timing chain, cam sensor/magnet, water pump etc.. so have started the process of stripping the front of the engine. I am at the point of removing the harmonic balancer now. I am seriously considering leaving the little shock and mounts off the front just to see if I can detect any discernable difference.  

 

Judging by what I see so far, Dave's stock may be raided again.

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I just remove the lower hose at the radiator. Also sounds like a wheel bearing, as you know I have some. Also I would just swap the column from the donor and your cruise should come back, because I violated my own rule about if something goes bad it is an end component and never the wiring, so I am sorry about that.

 Let me know if you need anything as I have some new parts and as you know lots of good used parts. And as I will be out by Bob's next week I could even deliver...

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I should know more after today’s adventures. Dave and I just discovered an anomaly, the Teves unit is from an early model with the hose instead of the steel line? The title and engine appearance are for an an 89 and the vin last four are 4788 so not early in the run?? Everything works well but it is a mystery. May be the catalyst to make a flare to banjo bolt adapter, just in case?

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Normally I would say that it might be dangerous to drive around in a car that has a 30 year old brake hose but that is exactly what I'm doing with brake hoses that go to the calipers. Maybe I should think about changing those.

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I wonder if the Reatta has a double master cylinder where if one hose blew out you would still have stopping power on two wheels? I have never looked into seeing if it does.

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10 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Normally I would say that it might be dangerous to drive around in a car that has a 30 year old brake hose but that is exactly what I'm doing with brake hoses that go to the calipers. Maybe I should think about changing those.

Last year I was doing some other work and discovered my front brake hoses had cracked outer casings. No other symptoms, but the front get a lot of bending and twisting beyond the usual flexing like the rear, which showed no ill effects. I did replace the front hoses and my impression was the brakes felt firmer after that. Could have been the fresh fluid bleeding to the front, but??

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10 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I wonder if the Reatta has a double master cylinder where if one hose blew out you would still have stopping power on two wheels? I have never looked into seeing if it does.

I would have to say no, it's not a conventional system. The front is done through a master cylinder with hydraulic boost. The rear has metered boost pressure routed directly to the brakes, I believe it is through a link connected to the master, that's why they self bleed with a little pedal pressure and open bleeders. If the boost fails, there are no rear brakes, just unboosted front brakes. In this case, the parking brake, many time erroneously called an emergency brake, really is an emergency brake in the Teves II world.

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28 minutes ago, 2seater said:

Last year I was doing some other work and discovered my front brake hoses had cracked outer casings. No other symptoms, but the front get a lot of bending and twisting beyond the usual flexing like the rear, which showed no ill effects. I did replace the front hoses and my impression was the brakes felt firmer after that. Could have been the fresh fluid bleeding to the front, but??

Bob and I just did the fronts on the ' vert and I think they work better.

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I already related the strange Teves system in place. 

 

I was at the point of removing the balancer and I am very glad both my boys came by this morning. The balancer bolt, the 1.125" head with the necked down shaft type, was stuck extremely tight. Even doing the bump the starter trick, multiple times, did nothing to loosen the bolt. Since I was going to replace the pan gasket anyway, I pulled the cover over the starter ring gear, and clamped it with a vise grip, which slipped and twisted with the amount of force required. Finally went ahead and pulled the pan, wedged the crank counterweight to the block and both men pushed on the 3ft extension pipe on the breaker bar. Finally broke loose but the extension pipe bent with the effort. Never had one that difficult to remove. Once opened up, found the cam sensor magnet was nothing but the empty case, explains the 041 code. The timing set looks pretty normal with the original style tensioner shoe worn about 75% through. This is with 179k miles so it looks like about 200k miles is the maximum expected life. Cleaned up the gasket surfaces and called it quits on the engine.

 

While the above was going on, #2 son pulled both steering columns. We found visible broken wires at the base of the turn signal stalk, photo below, on the original column. The replacement from the donor is of unknown functionality but nothing wrong with what we could see. At some point we restored electrical power to try the new radio speakers and the aux. cable from Dave. While that worked just fine, we discovered the passengers window motor drive is stripping, so the mate was pulled from the donor. I do not know the present functionality of the donor actuator but I do know I did extensive work on that door and glass when I first purchased it. The window was out of the track and I do not remember there being any issue with operation. Fingers crossed. Daughter in law changed the pass through door and latch with the perfect one from the donor. 

 

#1 son removed the a/c manifold and lines from the donor to see if that fixes the a/c leak in his black car. As a matter of fact, after last weeks power failure episode, he returned with the black with no sign anything had gone wrong. IMG_1422.thumb.JPG.a81a7e3021f68c881f45b9d8fe9462bf.JPG

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Wow. You guys are getting a lot of work done. Truly a family affair.   I changed the oil in my daughter's Camry today and I thought I had accomplished something until I read about all you had done today. Now I feel like a wimp in comparison.  ?

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I should have typed in your address so I can come see "Team Hal" in action!

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Not sure about the action but the old saw about many hands and light work ?

 

The car should be pretty nice interior wise for sure but I will need to deal with the lack of closed loop, reluctance to start without help, and some other items, but sure is interesting. My first actual grease monkey project in more than two years.

 

Dave, Are the white boxes on the columns the ignition you asked about?38AE0ED7-CB72-48C6-8E34-CB8A3C38706C.jpeg.e103161c19794d873484335242489571.jpeg

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Them are the ones.

 Also the transmission lines we have been talking about are 12 years old as Kendall told me when I bought the Red that we were replacing "everything". So while the old lines were in great condition as they never saw winter I bought NOS and installed them. The ones you now have are those lines. I am only willing to give those up as I got that real clean set out of that Riv at Gibson's and shouldn't have a use for them anymore.

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