Two years ago I went thru the water pump , opti replacement thing on an LT1. Recently I had a situation where my car would stall at high speeds only to be able to restart after a cool down. I took my car to a few shops which had a hard time diagnosing the problem because no codes were found. To make a long story short the last shop found that again it was the opti. They told me that the last job done on my car was sloppy and 2 out of 4 screws holding on the distributor cap were missing and the cap was not properly seated causing water, grime, etc to enter the system and again short out the opti. I went back to the shop which originally replaced the opti and was told that this is impossible that the car would not run with an unseated distributor cap. I told this to the shop that just did the new replacement and was told that yes it could run as the coil produces 80,000 volts ( or something like that) and would easily fire the opti. Opinions please ?

 

yes the car could run if two screws were missing and yes the car could not run with two screws missing. depends on if the cap stayed in a position to let the spark get to the plugs. and yes if the gasket/o ring was not installed correctly the inside would get wet and fail. i used some rvt on the o ring to make double sure it sealed up.

 

Kinda makes you wanna go to Sears and buy $200 worth of hand tools so you can do these things yourself, doesn't it?

Now I'm not saying that $200 covers every tool but it will get you through most basic jobs and a WP and opti are basic stuff.

 

I think the original shop has a point just as much as the current shop. At this point I would buy the torx set and purchase a cap and rotor replacement. Just put on the new cap and see if you're good to go.

We sell cap and rotor kits for about $25 shipped.