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.

 

damn the opti! hope everything works out for ya. if you need a hand im not far away lol

 

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.

 

man that sucks, at least you didnt get it going and take the car on a shake down and have to tow it back.

 

True, there would have been a whole lot more swearing and drinking had that happened.

 

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.

 

I like Dynaspark myself, its 700.00 dollars but its well for the price!

 

I second the crappy aftermarket optis. Go with OEM or high quality aftermarket. I've been there before too.

 

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.

 

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.

 

bad opti bad, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

I know the pain! I told my wife that I was gonna be visiting the Grand Ole Opti yesterday and she couldnt figure out why the hell I was driving to Tennessee...

 

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