Hey all, mods in sig. I've been blessed with almost 4 months of trouble free driving with this car, but now it's acting up again. It started a week ago, stumbling and coughing at 5000rpm and fighting me to rev it any higher. Other than that it drove fine.

Just so we can get it out of the way, I've got plenty of fuel pressure and volume, the AutoZone opti has 10K on it, as do the MSD wires and autolite plugs. I get spark from the coil, I've bypassed the MSD 6AL for ease of troubleshooting. It cranks nice and fast, plenty of voltage. I got one backfire out of it, and that's it, no attempts to "catch" at all. I pulled off a couple plug wires and tested for spark at the plugs, it was a nice bright blue spark, and the plugs look nice and clean.

I guess the timing could be wicked screwed up and that's why it won't fire, but DAMMIT it's frustrating when you KNOW you have fuel, air, and spark (assuming compression, it only has 60K miles.) and no action.

The coil and ICM aren't more than a year old, but I suppose it could be the ICM. I checked all the fuses I could find and they looked good too. Help!

Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

It might be flooded. Try holding the gas peddle to the floor when starting.

 

Yeah, i tried that, just makes a soft popping sound through the exhaust. Anyone else?

 

This is the exact same problem I'm having right now. I have fuel and spark but it wont start, only a putt every now and then.

Did you hear a rubbing/scratching sound before the car died?

I'm changing out the opti, hope that works.

 

Hmm, not that I heard, but I doubt I'd hear much over the exhaust anyway, fairly loud. I'm guessing the opti is messed up too, but I can't explain why I get spark to the plugs still. It's at the dealers right now on a scanner, we'll see what they come up with.

 

Keep me up to date as to what the dealer have to say.

Thanks

 

Did you get your car back from the dealers yet?

 

Dealer looked under the hood and said they wouldn't work on it because it's not 100% stock. I cussed out the service manager and had it towed to another shop, who diagnosed a bad opti. We're trying the new part tomorrow, but I'll let you know what caused it.

The old opti had LOTS of carbon tracking, and the terminals looked like they were covered in 20 years worth of junk (the terminals themselves were still present and not worn down, just caked with carbon and a light brown dust)

I heard someone mention once that the opti's don't like MSD ignitions very much, not built to handle that kind of spark energy or something. Any truth to that?

 

I just swapped out my opti too.
My car started right up.
The old opti had a bad bearing, all the ***** were getting grounded to shreds.