Friend of mine has a 94 Trans Am with about 60K and stock opti, and he is nervous as **** its going to go soon..

 

i got around 90k on mine and its still fine.

Granted mines vented, I don't think theres a way to tell. Some can die quickly, some can go 120+.

 

Mine outlasted the motor at 135k

 

194k on stock motor, even sprayed mine with the hose.

 

There really isn't a for sure range but I would say between 70,000-90,000 would be ballpark?

 

Distributor caps and rotors are WEAR ITEMS, if people treated them as such we would see a lot fewer "bad opti" posts. I am betting a lot of optis have been replaced when all they needed was a cap and rotor.

 

The factory opti on my 95 gave out at 105,000 ish. and the year was 2004 and when I took it apart , it really only needed a cap and rotor , but sense of security said to go get a brand new o.e.m unit from Summit , I had that one on for less than a year before it blew and it blew the hell up this time. I have since gone with MSD and find that so far it -so good, but expensive(525.00).

 

im glad you pointed this out because i agree completely

although when i got my car it had 60,000 miles was 11 years old with the original opti and it started missing, the bearing in the opti was toast but for the most parts they get a bad rep because people think its supposed to be like DIS

 

I still have the original in my Camaro. All that has been done to it is I cleaned the cap and rotor while replacing the waterpump.

 

When it gets wet.

 

57k miles on the car still has original opti, cap and rotor replaced two years ago. still going strong. it seems there has been mor problems with the replacements than the originals. dont fix whats not broke. if he is worried just replace the cap and rotor.

 

When you are more than 30 miles from home, alone without a phone, in the ghetto, and it's raining.

 

They go when they go. If your friend is that worried, he should find another car.

 

Exactly, I have 108k on mine, and it's fine as long as it's dry.

 

ANY distributor will act up if it gets water inside of it and the vast majority of the time work just fine again when it dries out.

Takes very little effort to improve the sealing of the opti. All I do is put a little dielectric grease on the weatherpack seal, make sure the harness is good and have no problems and as recently as Christmas weekend I took the wagon through 4-5" of water at 55mph without a hicup. Was raining heavily and snow was causing water to backup on the road, definete white knuckle moment I do not care to repeat.