I have been having a bad misfire after I drive the car for a while so I decided to take the opti out and take a look inside. And, I knew there would be some interested what I found so I took some pics.

First the problem ended up being the seal on the opti was bad and was allowing condensation or water somehow to enter the opti (when I put it back together it's getting a nice coat of silicone for water resistance).

So, here are the pics........

Here is a pic of the inside of the cap. It has been drying since yesterday in the sun but you can still see the water spots.


Here is the FAILED O-ring (discoloration is were the contamination was coming in).

Outside of cap (looks good to me)

Rotor. I did not take it off because I'm reusing it and I don't want to chance the rotor screws backing out when I put it back on the car as it seems like a lot of people are having problems with.



Terminals. This is another weak point in my opinion. If you look at the terminals you can see where the brass is corroding (green color)from the water.



The two terminals FURTHEREST from the leak.


Over all, I'm not that unhappy. It had a few problems but it still got me there and is fixable.

 

Ha, you managed to get a couple pics in focus.

Soooo many bad threads about allignition. I would not even come close to buying one from them.

 

I was one of the first to buy an opti from them so I did not get the advantage of research. As far as focus.......I SUCK as a camera man! But at least someone can "kinda" tell what it looks like! If this opti went bad I would NOT buy another one from them. But I must say, when the opti was brand new it started my car much better than my OEM from Dal. The GM was cold natured for some reason and this one started right up and ran great from the beginning.


On a side note, I have a lot (3-4)of GM cap and rotors from some of my old opti's do you think I'd be better off using one of those other than this one with brass conductors? I don't know which metal is a better conductor.

 

Thats what i have to look forward to! I already have a miss at 3000 rpms.

 

All I can say is good luck. Some people do fine with optis but I went through them like crazy. The only ones that lasted any amount of time were complete ones from GM for me.

I did notice on pretty much any non GM I had a really hard time getting the seal to well,, seal.

 

Just an FYI - you can clean the terminals before you reinstall it by using a pencil eraser to take most of the corrosion off and it won't hurt it. Might be a good idea.

 

I'm having good performance from my MSD Opti and still believe the MSD is the best option for Opti replacements. Yes, I had some problems initially with my MSD (loose rotor screws), but once I fixed those problems the MSD has performed very well.

WD

 

I will do that.....if I reuse the cap and rotor from the pics.

 

I took the cap off, and used loctite on the rotor screws, and silicone grease on the gasket, before i installed it, mines been working good.

 

You have a misfire. You have the opti out and the cap off. You know there was water in it. But you're not going to disassemble it to determine it's condition?

 

Have you ever had an opti disassembled? There is only 2 more mechanical pieces to it.....the wheel and optical eye. The shutter wheel is the only one of those that I could even possibly see is bad. I'd rather not chance taking the bolts off the rotor and having them back out on me in the near future. I know I could just Loctite it back but I'd rather take a educated guess and say the water was the cause of the issue. Maybe I don't know something you do about SEEING a problem further down?

 

More than one.

If your guess was educated, you'd then be looking at the parts of the opti which fail from water intrusion. (Hint - they're the parts you haven't looked at yet...)


You'd rather guess than spend 5 min on diagnosis? When the consequence of a bad guess is another opti R/R? Again, I can only say

 

So, you're saying water in the cap and rotor will not cause a severe misfire? It will run great then all of a sudden just start misfiring. I understand how the optical shutter can get wet and cause problems (or the eye) but "seeing" the problem is not possible as far as I know. I'm not trying to start a pissing war here or say you're wrong.....I know what you're saying I just didn't see where the risk vs. reward was worth it. As far as taking my opti back out of my car...I can do it in about 15 minutes. I'm deleting the accessory bracket, PS, and AC delete pulley so fans,6 water pump bolts, 3 balancer bolts, and 3 opti bolts and it's out! Not that hard of a job for me.


But, just for the fun of it I will take it apart and look at it and take some pics so you can tell me what to look for when it's apart.

 

Time for me to man up and admit I was wrong..... There WAS water in the bottom too. I don't know that it was causing a problem but I'm sure it was not helping. Thanks for the suggestion. I did not take pics but there was just a few drops after sitting out and drying for a few days.

 

Your allignition opti made it a year, sweet!! Mine didn't even make it a day LOL.