My water pump is starting to drip on my belt a little when I shut the car off. Since I'll be down there, should I go ahead and replace the opti too? I'm not having any problems with it, and my car only has 82k miles on it.

 

If you don't mind tearing it down in the future, then I say leave it. There's nothing wrong with it now, you might as well wait till it craps out to replace it. Just make sure you don't let any fluid get on the Opti, drain the radiator before you pull the water pump. later!

Jeremy

 

Anything I need to look out for when replacing the water pump? Is there an o-ring or anything on the driveshaft coming out of the timing cover?

 

There is a seal for the waterpump driveshaft in the timing cover, however, I'm pretty sure there is no need to replace it. In fact, you might have to remove the timing cover to change it. When you put the temperature sensor in your new pump, DO NOT overtighten it, as this could crack the aluminum pump housing. later!

Jeremy

 

Thanks Jeremy.
I hate asking questions on simple things like this, but I try to anticipate everything that might come up. Helps keep me from going into a rage on my car while working on it

 

If you don't mind the extra time involved, I'd go ahead and pull the opti and open it up and see if it looks fine or not. If it's the early opti I bet you will see problems. Especially since you have leakage from the water pump.

Even if there's no water damage - would you go 80k on a normal distributor without replacing the cap and rotor?

 

No, you wouldn't, but Opti cap and rotor kits are not cheap. They are anywhere from $130 to $200 just for a cap and rotor.
It's really not that difficult to pull the water pump, so I wouldn't spend the money now on something you probably don't need just yet. Although it wouldn't be a bad idea to pull the cap off and check the condition of the cap and rotor, and then decide if you want to replace the cap and rotor now.

Jeremy

 

That is the stance i had to take with my situation. And my waterpump dumped a ton of water at once on my opti (but I guess as someone told me here, having a vented opti, I'm a bit safer). So far, the car doesn't seem to have opti issues. I reasoned that if it went bad, I'd want to do the Dynaspark or Delteq change, not the regular opti. Fortunately, that isn't the case, all I had to spend money on was the waterpump.

 

don't mess with it if it's not broken.