Well, there is oil in my 1yr 3 month old MSD optispark distributor. That would explain the missfires...and my car almost dying....But how did it get in there? I dont know....

I am kind of getting tired of this whole deal as this is the 3rd distributor in 2 years....We took it apart, cleaned out the oil, and are going to put it back together.

But how long before more oil gets in there? I am just going to replace all of the seals on the front of the engine, and hope it doesnt leak anymore...

It's from the front seals, mine did that too.

well this MSD is a year and three months old and now it is bad...my wires are 3 months old and bad....the only thing that has really survived this whole ordeal are the spark plugs...and i dont have the money for a new distributor and set of wires so now it sits....

Well, if it was me I'd try cleaning the oil out and giving it another shot. Just be carefull some of the components are delicate. The water pump seal is a real pita, you have to put a sleeve around the pump shaft before you slide the seal on the shaft. That seal is EXTREMELY easy to tear and it will still leak unless you do it this way. Trust me, I had to do it twice and still have an extra front seal set sitting in my garage minus the water pump seal to prove it. I used a thin piece of plastic wrapped around the shaft.

What's wrong with the wires?

well i cleaned the oil out and out it back together already, got the car put back together...and it runs the same as before...so either the opti is too far gone or my wires are bad. They the the taylor otvc set, i have headr they are horrible. Now, just for testing purposes, we took the left for plugs off while the caar was running, and there was no change to the choppiness of the idle....whaat does that meaan?

Ok a few questions.

Have you scanned it for any codes?
Did it start running crappy all at once or gradually?
I've heard things going both ways with the Taylor wires, some guys swear by them, others hate them. The ones that hate them are enough for me to steer clear of them.
Do you still have the old wires?
And you pulled four plug wires at once or one at a time? If you're getting a random mis loosing one more cylinder might be hard to distingish.

What plugs are you using and how do you know they are ok? Did you remove all of them or just a few?

Matt

i pulled all of the ngk iridium tr55ix plugs and other than being red on the tips, assuming too much fuel because it is running rich, they looked like the day i put them in.

I threw all of the cat codes, since there are none, multiple random missfires, and a bad airpump. ruled the airpump out because, well, it isnt bad...I dont think.
I burnt through a wire yesterday being hasty and trying to get it back together. So now i for sure need a new set of wires.
This was a when it goes, it goes kind of thing. I drove my car to my girlfriends house, everything was fine...I leave to go home....no power at all...the car just sputters and tries to stall
We cleaned the optispark of the oil, checked the wires with an OM (sp) meter, and they all completed circuits. one is burned to the white interior part....

Is it possible to throw these distributors out of timing? Like 180 out? i test drove it yesterday and when igot it up to about 3k rpms, it launched, seemingly full power....then it stutters aand missfires when it goes back below around 3k

Im so lost....

Absolutely possible, if you didn't get it index properly when you put it back on it would run like crap if it ran at all. It sounds like a boneheaded thing to do but I can promise it easy to do, I did. Luckily I caught before I got everything back together. I find when I work on cars that it's good sometimes to step back, survey things and say to yourself "ok what did I miss or what could I have screwed up?" That's how I caught it.

Take it back off, turn the rotor until the key is as close as you can get to lined up by eye and mark the opti and rotor with a sharpie. When you slide the opti back on line up the marks and the rotor shouldn't turn "at all". If it does it isn't keyed properly.

Just wondering if you ever got this fixed?

getting wires soon, i think that is the problem

You got the Taylors?

so on a hunch, i took the msd distributor off and put my old, second, OE distributor on. didnt change anything else and the car runs like a champ!



Back in Action Baby haha

Interesting, I've heard of other people having problems with MSD opti's but I thought they worked out those issues, I guess not. Good to hear you got her running again.

Well with the oil in the distributor, coming from the timing chain gasket leak, I think the sensor got messed up. I sent it off and they said they may be able to extend my warranty since i am 4 months out of the 1 year warranty. I bought a new gasket so when it comes back from Texas, I will throw them both in....#####, I may leave the stock distributor in until it dies.