It's the equivalent of having an old school engine with a conventional distributor and never giving it a tune-up for 100k+ miles. Even that engine will be running crappy, if at all, by then.
Installing the water pump seal is tricky (if you did replace it, hopefully). There's a right and wrong way of doing it.

 

i did it right i read all your tricks and the guy helping knows lt1's like the back of his hand. also the many threads on here helped a ton. reading for an hour saves about 4 hours of work.

 

If it is pinging, you should take a look at the Knock Sensor and its wiring. The PCM looks at the KS for knock signals and retards the spark until it stops.

 

Hey everyone....I was hoping to chime in on this Opti discussion.

I am having a similar issue I believe.

Today I was driving my Camaro ( 96 Z28) and I was sitting at a stop light...and all of a sudden the RPM dropped to about 600 then jumped back up to 1100 and idled back down to 900, which is where it normally idles at.

Then I took off from the stop light, and shifting into second, then while accelerating in 2nd i got to around 1500 RPM then the engine felt like it was hesitating, and all of a sudden it jerked and the power was back, then it did it again in 3rd gear at about 1500 RPM, this time I push the throttle down more and it didnt do anything, then it jerked again and the power was back. So I turned around and got my truck....Haha

It also has a funny smell after I turn it off...Kinda of like a flooded smell. Does this sound like the Opti ?

I noticed it had been losing hesitating at 1500 for a couple weeks, but today it was the worst its been so far.

 

start a new thread please

pssstttt- but it sounds like O2 sensors to me and the computer can't compensate

 

Pull codes first. Also, do your symptoms change after 10-15 minutes? Also, with richness I would also agree on the O2s, ESPECIALLY if it runs good cold and then it almost switches into crap mode.