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Saving Reattas from the crusher is a family project.


2seater

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Warped rotor, brake pad loose from bracket, loose caliper bolt...

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2seater, I had a similar problem with my brakes that I thought was caused by the pump overheating. Doesn't seem like you should have the same problem in the frigid north but the pump may be running continuously for some reason causing it to overheat. Below is what I wrote about it last year. There should be a topic with more details about it somewhere here on the forum but I couldn't find it.  I remember it well so if you have any questions feel free to ask.

 

On 9/28/2020 at 11:55 AM, Ronnie said:

Some of you may remember me posting about this problem. I had the same thing happen on a hot day when I was going around a scenic, 11 mile, loop through the Smoky mountains National Park. I was in bumper to bumper traffic moving about 5 miles per hour with a lot of stopping and starting to look at wildlife requiring me to do a lot of brake pumping. When I was almost at the end of the loop the brake pedal started chattering like the ABS was engaging and then the power boost went out completely. Both brake warning lights came on.

 

Luckily I was near a wide place in the road where I could pull over near an old abandoned log cabin. The pump wasn't running. I looked everything over and decided too much heat under the hood might have caused the problem. I swapped out the relays on the firewall but that didn't help. I left the hood open and we went and sat on the porch of the old cabin for about 30-45 minutes to allow the brake system to cool off. When we got back in the car the brakes worked fine. It has never happened since.  I don't know for sure what caused the problem.

 

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3 minutes ago, DAVES89 said:

Warped rotor, brake pad loose from bracket, loose caliper bolt...

That is a good possiblity. I had a caliper bolt come loose on my Blazer allowing the caliper to lay back against the wheel and it did a lot of chattering with it scuffing against the wheel. And believe it or not it would still stop.  Lucky for me I was in sight of my house when it happened. Don't k now how long it would have lasted grinding into the wheel like that.

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Thanks to you both. I remember the possible heat induced loss of brake boost from Ronnie’s post. It definitely needs investigation but I hope we can park it for a while. 
 

Related to the extended life Reatta’s. No.1 son is going to try to retrieve parts from my donor at the cottage, headlight assembly, fender and hood, to repair the Black that hit the deer last fall. We shall see how that goes this weekend.

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I knew he would come around. No better deal on parts then free!

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The red car has been retired from the road for the time being. It was driven to the cottage storage to await warmer weather and we can evaluate the power steering leak and the oddball brake behavior. My son drove the car to the cottage and he reports exactly the same as the grandson mentioned: the car brakes normally down to about 10mph and then it feels like the antilock engages and braking is reduced. 

 

The grandson purchased another car, a late model Mustang six speed. Oh to be young again and not stick to the practical or logical?

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The donor car gave up its hood, right fender, headlight assembly and the corner light assembly on the same side. These will find a new home on the black car for replacement of the damage from the deer last fall. No. 1 son says he misses driving the car and nice weather is coming.

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The "donor" car you bought all those years ago is really starting to pay off. Maybe in a year or two you might be interested in the '88 Black/Tan of mine as I am heading south earlier every year and have less use of a "winter" Reatta. 

 No I am not getting out of the Reatta business and am pretty sure I will keep the Red forever. 

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I am not a Reatta owner or particularly interested in these cars, but I'm a car enthusiast in general and appreciate old/weird cars. I spend my free time roaming salvage yards and recently came across this Reatta. It is a new addition to this salvage yard and I couldn't help but think that this car is too nice to deserve what's coming to it.

 

If anyone is interested in saving this car it's located in eastern WI. Daves89, I see you are in Menasha, WI. Do you know anything about this one?

 

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Edited by Mark D
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Welcome to the forum Mark. Thanks for taking the time to let us know about this Reatta.

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No problem! Even if it can't be saved whole, at least there are a lot of usable parts. I'm not seeing a lot of rust or anything so who knows why it ended up where it did. That damage on the LH side fender/door may have been enough for an insurance company to total it.

 

Hopefully someone here can do something with it.

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28 minutes ago, Mark D said:

That damage on the LH side fender/door may have been enough for an insurance company to total it.

That frequently happens with these cars. Body parts are hard to come by compared to others cars and expensive to ship because of their size. Body shop labor has got so high sometimes it doesn't make sense to repair them.

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  • 1 month later...

I think the car referenced above has been visited by a few people on this forum, including my #1 son just last week😉
 

As I mentioned some time ago the red car is back in #2 sons possession. We finally had the opportunity to look into the power steering fluid leak. We knew the pressure hose from the pump was seeping and have had the new hose assembly since last fall. It had developed a second leak of power steering fluid by the left front corner. The cooler up front was previously replaced with an aftermarket unit. It turned out the connecting hose  had developed a leak inside the split loom covering so we replaced all of the hose between the cooler and the steel line on the frame rail. Nice and dry now. We still need to address the strange brake issue and appreciate the previous suggestions, but that’s for another day.

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  • 1 month later...

The black car was back on the road today and came to the cottage. It is multi colored now with a claret hood and right fender and the red headlight covers from the red car mentioned above in the junkyard post🤔 Paint may come later. 
 

We looked over the red car and found the brake pump wouldn’t run, so the issues started to come into focus. It may have been getting intermittent but finally failed. We found no power on the switching wire for the brake pump relay which traced back to the 5amp fuse in the harness under the dash. It was blown and replacing the fuse got the pump to kick in. All appeared normal but two replacement relays from the donor car failed in short order for no apparent reason? Maybe years of outdoor storage? In any case, a plain relay like used in relay centers is in place and functioning fine. The brakes no longer exhibit any odd behavior but it does appear the ABS has failed in some manner. Replacing the brake module in the trunk did nothing so that will wait for the future, maybe 🤔 At this point, the assumption is two things were in the process of failure simultaneously causing the peculiar symptoms. We still have an electrical fault warning on the ipc but everything important seems to work just fine, including the a/c. The car runs and drives great and went home for summer duty wearing relatively new snow tires😖

 

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Glad to hear you were able to get it back on the road. Sounds like there are still some bugs to be worked out but you're getting there. I wish I had that much get up and go. 🙂

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If it wasn’t for my boys, much that has been done would likely still be lingering😖 It cleared the lift so the old Ranger can be moved in to get the rear brake line replaced. It is slated to be a cottage/woods truck from now on.

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