So I finally got the car running after the whole water pump ordeal.

Coolant did get splashed everywhere, but we did our absolute best to protect the opti and let it dry during this time.

Anyway I drove the car back to school (bout a 2 hour drive) the other day and it was driving like pure ****.

The car seemed to be "running on 7 cylinders". I dont know if this is true or not, because at ilde there was no noticeable shaking or anything.

The car seemed to rev up just fine...a little more vibration, but I think I could get it up to about 5 grand with no problems...didnt wanna push it to hard.

Normal driving though, it felt really rough and would hickup and stumble through the whole RPM band as I was cruisng and passing.

especially in 6th gear going 75, the shift **** was shaking pretty bad due to the engine vibrations.

power was not as good as it used to be eithe...at least I dont think.

The problem did stop at certain times, but then would come back, and it seemed to progressivly get worse and worse as I got further and further.

The opti, as far as I know has 114K mile on it

I dont know when the wires were changed, or if they were changed, but one did have a nice crack in it exposing the wire...but I patched that up with some electrical tape.

So from these symptoms, whats the best course of action.

Thanks guys

 

If the car is running bad, and not missing, it usually is not the opti. If the opti is missing, or not getting spark to the plugs, you'll hear loud clicking noises like it's an arc. Stumbling or loss of power could be from multiple other things, also. When my opti got wet it would stumble/miss, but it was very obvious it was the opti, and not something else. The car will still rev, but slowly, and would take short stops at certain RPMs depending on when it missed.

 

Electrical tape is not really intended to stand up to 30,000 volts.

 

mcfly sounds like you need a tune up.......just do it all at one time if its old

 

Electrical tape on plugs wires is a big no no!

 

hah I had to put the car in limp mode once becuase of an arcing plug wire. Tried the electrical tape idea, and it didnt hold for less than 2miles.

 

Well I was changing my oil about a 3 months back and I noticed a slight crack out of the corner of my eye in the wire.

At the time the car was running real strong, so I figured it was better to protect it with something than nothing...and since then its run fine up until I changed the water pump and had the coolant issue which is leading me towards the opti

 

Your car is acting exactly like mine.

I'm going to be changing out all the stock wires very soon for some MSD 8.5's.

 

Well tonight what I'll do is pop the hood with the engine on and look for any sparking

then check the connections tomorrow

and then replace them

and then do the opti if none of that works

 

and what does a tuneup usually consist of

 

plugs wires and in your case a new opti.....a GM/delco one, I would not take a chance with cheapo stuff. Good thing is you know how to do it now after the WP.....you will need to pull the balancer but its no big deal.

 

sounds like a loose/bad plug wire to me? mine had this exact same problem, and i thought it was the cap and rotor, and i knew it wasnt plug/wire related because they had less than 10k on them, but when we took the waterpump out to get down to the opti, we discovered one loose plug wire on it, and even though we didnt actually check to see if this was the problem before i swapped out the cap and rotor, im guessing that it was why it was doing it... it acted like it was running on 7 cyls, lots of hesitation, especially after the car warmed up.

 

Yea I'm thinkin the wires on the problem

Jacked the car up today and took a look and noticed that the wire on the driver side back plug was resting against the exhaust pipe and had melted through my tape and was exposing the wire again.

I moved it as best I could and the car ran differently, but still bad.

I'll be replacing them friday

I haven't searched for which wires would be best yet (too lazy), so if you want throw out some suggestions please do

 

I have the red 8.5mm MSD's in mine

 

whered you get them from and how much?

any gains over just getting stock wires?