I'm going to try to cliff note this as best I can.

Saturday, installed CSI water pump... tried to be as careful as I could w/ the opti.. anytime coolant would fall on it I would immediately blow it off with my air blower fittings.

Saturday-Today, car ran fine driving to work and back. Ran like a champ 100%

Today, took the car to the track. Made one pass right off the street and went 12.19... DA out was great, I was setting out for 11's. Parked it for cooldown, came back to run.

Started my burnout after the waterbox and BEWM. Car died mid-burnout.. it sounded terrible when it died (like the motor had blown up.. metal on metal sounds, etc) and from what I hear a nice backfire out of my cutout. The motor would turnover, but not fire up.

Push the car to the staging lanes.. pull a plug, no spark. Ok.. just in case we pulled a valve cover to make sure my valvetrain moved. Ok, that checked out OK.

The weird parts:

As I'm cranking, my oil pressure gauge does not move.. every once in a while while cranking it would jump to 10psi or so, then drop. Weird sound from the opened valvecover.. a whooshing sound.. almost like pressure being released.. someone said it sounded like a bent valve? Dunno.. never heard one before.

Last weird part... after cranking for a seconds the car would act like it fired.. it would turn on its own for what sounded like 4 or 5 very slow revolutions.. then quit.

I'm thinking the opti just took it's final spill after the water pump install... although it ran for a few days, the no spark leads me to believe it just quit on me mid-burnout and the backfire was it giving up. I'll confirm the no spark tomorrow in some light. My coil has spark... so if just the opti doesn't...

 

I'm betting opti....that thing ran like **** after we put the water pump in dude. It only makes sense for it to be the opti since it progressively got better and better and was intermittent at times.

 

I'm leaning really heavily towards it just being an opti. We'll be pushing the car back into my garage tonight and doublechecking for spark from the opti. If there is none, off it comes...

 

My Opti did this in the middle of a business trip. It turned out that it was the high resolution pulse just quit. It tried starting just like you said.....but before you go digging into replacing the opti, make sure the connector on the passenger side of the opti is still plugged in, I have had a backfire that popped the connector out.

 

check for spark, at both a plugs wire and at the coil wire