Cheap Opti Strikes again
Cheap Opti Strikes again Well, I was all set to fire up the hawk tonight, but my Opti had other thoughts. Had good oil pressure and fuel pressure but the car would not start. Cranked over smoothly, but was making a clicking noise. So I had my wife turn the key as I checked a few things. Turns out I had a ton of spark going into the Opti (which is new, but not Gm), from the MSD, but very little at #1 plug. It was all going to the water pump. The cap cracked right at the base of the coil wire and burnt a little hole in the cap. So lesson learned, bought a gm Opti tonight and hopefully will have better results in a few days.
On The Tree
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 155
Likes: 0
From: Portsmouth, Ohio
The aftermarket Opti's seem to be A LOT worse then an OEM unit! It's kinda like a few other OE LT1 parts that are better than aftermarket parts. Has anyone actually had success with the aftermarket opti's?
there are a few lucky people out there that get away with the cheap opti's but not many. MSD and Dynaspark are the best aftermarket opti's. Ive heard of problems with the Accels, Autozone, and others. My GM opti has been fine sine i replaced it 3 years ago. Although a friend of mine just literally grenaded his GM opti a few days ago.
I made the mistake of getting on off of Ebay that was supposed to be gm replacement. You get what you pay for. It did surprise me the cost difference for a gm Opti on some of the sites. I have not heard anything bad about the MSD Opti, but would definitely recommend at least going with the Gm version.
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Got the new GM distributor today, put it in, put everything back on and first try it started up, finally. Still have a few little things to take care of like an oil leak at the dipstick tube, and exhaust leak.
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If looking to blow $500+ when a simple cap and rotor replacement is probably all your stocker needs why not go with the LTCC and completely eliminate the high voltage duties of the opti.
Personally I have had great results with the stock piece and last heads and cam swap I simply replaced the 70K mile cap and rotor on a stock opti with fresh pieces from MSD. Replaced the stock pieces because of milage and because it was apart not because they were faulty.
Personally I have had great results with the stock piece and last heads and cam swap I simply replaced the 70K mile cap and rotor on a stock opti with fresh pieces from MSD. Replaced the stock pieces because of milage and because it was apart not because they were faulty.
I agree with Dwane on this one. My opti did this and ran like crap.
The brown you see is the epoxy you see from the outside on the front! Completly burned the internal wire through the black plastic. Anyways, an O'Reilly's cap and rotor fixed the problem without spending the big $$$ on a complete opti. O'Reilly's webpage The funny thing? The car had 99,998 miles on it when I changed it out, I bullshit you not. Good luck with yours. Opti's are a fickle beast at best, sometimes you can never tell what the hell they're going to do.
The brown you see is the epoxy you see from the outside on the front! Completly burned the internal wire through the black plastic. Anyways, an O'Reilly's cap and rotor fixed the problem without spending the big $$$ on a complete opti. O'Reilly's webpage The funny thing? The car had 99,998 miles on it when I changed it out, I bullshit you not. Good luck with yours. Opti's are a fickle beast at best, sometimes you can never tell what the hell they're going to do.
TECH Enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 521
Likes: 0
From: Spencerport, NY
The only problem I have had with my opti is moisture. Once you drive it long enough it dries out a little and runs better. But it desperatly needs to be replaced. I have about 126,000mi on the stock unit. heres a cool video of my car running like crap sorry about the quality, it was off my cell phone.
Video of the bad opti, at least it sounded cool -->like a huge cam
Video of the bad opti, at least it sounded cool -->like a huge cam