CrazyLT1

Hey guys,

Car has been running crappy for a while - then finally died on me last week and needed to be towed home. After hearing everyone saying "its probably the opti" - I just decided to change that first and get it over with for a piece of mind and then go from there.

Anyways - one the day the car died - it would not fire AT ALL, and would just crank forever.

Now - after I just changed the opti: It tries to fire a lot but doesn't start. I checked for spark on the rear spark plug and saw all kinds of blue spark. I'm thinking the fuel is good also because I can hear the pump real good and my garage smells like fuel after cranking it for a while.

Now I am second guessing myself if I could have possibly installed the opti wrong. I know the dowel pin has to go in the one slot with the little notch in it - and that it should be flush with the timing chain cover. My question is: JUST HOW FLUSH MUST IT BE WITH THE TIMING CHAIN COVER?? Because every time I got it to pop in all the way - it looked to be flush with the cover itself, but the bolts had a very slight amount of space between the opti bolt holes and the timing cover - maybe like a quarter inch at most - but the opti itself looked to be flush. The bolts easily pulled in flush when tightening them. So I am just wondering if all the bolt holes themselves had to be completely flush or not....

Sorry for the long post and thanx in advance for your advice. This car is driving me crazy!....

Compstall

I would take the opti off and check the positioning again.

mrmint69

Be sure to use thread lock and on my MSD opti it is almost touching the balancer. The space is 1/16 to 1/8 away! If you didn't get it on all the way it would hit if you used the same opti as me.

Procharged94Lt1

Double check the positioning- it should be sitting completely flush against the timing cover...from what you describe it sounds like the timing is off- which the only way to do that is to have the opti wrong..

CrazyLT1

I slid it off and on about 10 times - and that was the furthest I could get it to slide on. I know that it is in the right slot because I marked the round pice with a red line where the right hole is and watched the cam dowel perfectly lined up with the red line while it slid on.

The only thing I was thinking is that I may have possibly missed the hole and just had the dowel in that large indented betterfly circle and it seemed like it was on. But my buddy told me that the bolts wouldnt have pulled it in if it wasn't inside one of the holes - and the bolts pulled it in fine.

I took the back spark plug wire off and tested it for spark - looked like it had a good amount of bright blue spark.

Then I took a spark plug itself out - and it looked good- except I would have expected it to be a little wetter and smell more like gas than it did - especially considering how many times I have cranked the engine over without it starting. So I guess I need to verify that I have enough fuel now. If I put a fuel pressure guage on the shrader valve how many pounds should I see while cranking the engine?? (I have heard between 40-45 lbs. is good at cranking) Is this true?