TransAm396

...well...the other day..me being the idiot that i am..wanted to wash my engine..lol..well i did..and i powerwashed it for a good 5 min...then started it..it started kinda funny..but then ran fine...ran fine alll day..then sat. morning i woke up to go to the track..got in it..and it would barely go..jerking back and fourth ..HORRIBLY....so i parked it..went back to bed...4 hours later i woke up...got in it..and it ws perfect..like nothing ever happend....same with sunday..the monday!...go to work..its fine...get out of work..it started bucking HORRIBLY..esp around around2k and wouldnt really go past 2 k...so..i figured it would go away....never did..so today..i went out and bought the diskstyle distributor...took my car apart..took my opti out and apart.the dist. was rusted to ****..and the cap...every post had this corroded stuff on it...and the rotor?(lil thing that spins around..was kinda greenish..SO..i wirebrushed all the posts..(they came very clean BUT....they had like chunks missing out of them...and i grinded the rotor a lil bit and cleaned it..put everything back together(total time was 3 hours..it was my first time and with no instructions so dont laugh) started the car..ran weird for a second...(timing adjusting..)..so i pull out..go..and SAME damn problem..didnt fix a damn thing...now im thinkin the problem was in the cap..or rotor..so i just went ahead and bought a whole new opti and i will have it in tomorrow..BTW..i checked the coil and that wasnt bad...hopefully it was the opti..we will find out tomorrow!plugs are new..wires are old..but it didnt do it till i soaked the engine..and everything inside it was all rusted....any ideas?

TobyZ28

The "..."'s Make your post REALLY hard to read
You mentioned you bought a "discstyle" distributor, what did you mean by disk-style?
From what you mentioned It sounded like you bought a new distributor (opti?) and then took the old opti out, cleaned it and put the old opti back in.

What throws me off is that at the end of the post you said your going to go out and buy a new opti distributor, yet you just did that at the beggining of the post.

If you just cleaned up the old opti, its hit or miss. Sounds like the new opti will fix your problem.

TransAm396

ok..theres two parts to an opti..two major parts anyways..the cap and rotor..and the distributor..the best way to describe the distributor(which is the metal part of the opti when its apart..is a DISC like metal piece..).i replaced that part of the opti..the optical sensor/distrib. what i didnt replace was the cap)the thing with the 8 "fingers sticking out of it" and the little rotor thing that spins around and shoots sparts at the posts inside the cap.....b4 i did anything..it would miss really bad..esp around2k...but everywhere else..just extra hard..now that i replaced half the opti(i already ordered a whole new opti) it still does the same thing..hopefully its the cap and rotor part of it.

TobyZ28

Usually the Cap and rotor are what fails on opti's Sounds like its the Cap and rotor as well, if your wires are not crossed, the new Opti sounds like it should fix your problem.

jsetzer

I learned the hard way. Always replace it with a GM complete set. I went through 4 Auto**** ones before makeing them give me my money back and ordering one from Jason in FL. Fixed it for good.

TobyZ28

I learnt the easy way from reading posts from people like jsezer and just called up jason the first time for a complete opti