I had an opti go bad on my car, so I used the $149 ebay special that I had as a spare. Well it was bad. I found out that it was put together 90 degrees out of phase and I didn't think I could get it apart without damaging it, so I bought one from thepartsladi that was supposed to be a new AC Delco unit. Well when it got here it was in an AC Delco box, but it had clear tape over the brown factory tape. I opened it up and it was stuffed with newspaper as packing material. Now I don't remember GM ever packing an item with old newspaper, but I wasn't going to complain yet. I get to looking at it and it's got carbon deposits on the recesses for the camshaft bolts, which leads me to believe it's a rebuilt opti and not a new factory unit. Sure enough, I go to install it and the shaft is just slightly too large to fit in the recess in the camshaft. So now I have two new optis, neither of which will get the car running. Just to get it on the road, I go to autozone and buy one of their reman pieces and use the cap and rotor from one of the bad ones I had laying around. Well I get it home and inspect it and the optical wheel is rubbing on the sensor. I unbolted it and tried to get it to sit right, but it just wasn't going to work. Finally, I decided to pull the one that was on the car and take the parts from one of the others to build one good unit... Well that finally worked, so after purchasing three bad optisparks, I had enough parts to build one good one. I get it on and all buttoned up, I go to fill the radiator back up and my SES light comes on. My MAF is dead. I'm getting so tired of having to troubleshoot this thing... I'm going to put another MAF on it and if anything else pops up somebody's going to get a hell of a deal on a clean LT1...

 

While the MSD Opti has had a few problems, I still believe it is the best option for high performance LT applications (increased RPM).

Knock on wood, my MSD has been running great in my bracket car for several races and weeks now.

WD

 

I've thought about it, but there was no way to get one in the time frame I was looking at, so I had to make something work. I'm thinking that will be what I replace this with when it acts up again.

 

Only a tried and true AC Delco ordered from Jason Cromer at the GM dealer for wholesale price of $230.

 

Ive heard good things from MSD as well.

 

I ordered what was supposed to be an AC Delco unit, but it was junk too. I think I am going to jump on the bandwagon and start ordering parts from Cromer. The dealerships here are really trying to bend me over on parts and I even have a wholesale account with them.

 

I had some hesitation probs with my car and wasted 280 trying to fix in on my own.. Got tired of it and bought a ac delco optispark here at some store (not the dealership) got it for 341 + taxes.. My car works like a charm now...

 

If you search on this board, you will find plenty of bad, too.

 

Try the PartsLadi on ebay. I recieved a factory packed opti thats survived many trips past 6300 rpm


Mike

 

I think he has been that route, if you read his first post...

 

Prolly more bad than good

As far as buying cheap opti's go.. I don't understand why people don't just use Cromer instead of trying to save a few bucks here and there. He's tried and true, works at a GM parts counter and really hooks us all up. I use him for *all* my GM parts needs, even if my Dad is looking for something he'll give me a call and ask me to order stuff from him lol

 

Same here. I've never heard of this "partsladi", but Jason Cromer sells the real deal. I got my last opti from him (plus tons of other crap over the years), no problems with it.

He's got a great reputation with the LT1 crowd.... Others too, I'd imagine.

 

Yep, I've hooked up many of my turbo Buick brothers with him. He can get lots of hard to find GM parts that other folks want 2x the price for....like those rear bumper fillers

 

I called one of the dealerships for an opti harness and they quoted me $206 for it. I told the guy that it lists for less than half of that and his response was "Well that's what I have them in my system as." I'm just going to take your advise from now on and call Jason.

 

I would contact thepartsladi and let them you know you got a bum opti and aren't happy. The last time I looked, their EBay rep was 100%.