Just took my opti off in the process of doing head and cam install.

I took the cap off and saw both rotor screws completely loose and partially backed out. I was wondering if anyone has seen this before?

What problems would this cause if any, car has been running very strong? I will be lock-titeing them back in.

 

It happens lock tite will fix it. They back out from vibrations and the rpm that the rotor spins. If the car would have been running and the screws fell out the rotor would have fell off and cause dammage to the opti spark. The car would have died and you would have had it towed to where evere and would have posted on here asking what could cause the car to just die without throwing a code.

Edit: use the red lock tite as its a little bit stronger.

 

I've had the screws work loose on 3 separate optis. I use loc-tite now.

 

Yep.. I'm in full belief this is the number one problem with opti's especially in the early years. Oh to think how many good optis were thrown away because of this problem. Mine did the same thing 10,000 miles after I bought mine. Some red loc-tite did the trick and went strong for another 100K miles before I retired it.

 

Anyone ever see any performance issues with this problem. I have had a very small and intermittant miss around 5.5K that I have been chasing. All ignition new but the opti.

Can this cause the high RPM miss?

 

I don't know of anyone that could say with absolute certainty. Anything is possible.

 

It appears that the rotor spring loaded terminal was adequate enough to keep the rotor in position, I removed the screws entirely by hand. I had consistently been revving the engine to around 6K.


I was also really amazed at how clean the inside of my 78K opti was. There was no rust dirt or anything, in fact it could pass for brand new. I am going to clean the exterior of the parts and sit it on the shelf.

I currently have the Accel opti going back in and I have red loctited the screws.

 

I've had two opti's do that. The last one had less than 3k mile. I'm getting the MSD cap and rotor this time and I will use locktite as well.