go get`em :smash: :cheers:

 

I'd love to be able to e-mail "MO_BANDY, but either my system here at work wont allow me to, or the address is wrong. Please e-mail me at
CECENAAD@FLASH.NET
I'm planning on replacing my optispark this weekend and would like some tips ! ! ! !

Thanks, Eddie in Tucson :cool: :cheers:

 

Ed ...you have mail :blueangel:

Mo

 

EUREKA--Well the dealer had a rep call back and I figured it was to tell me tough luck. But Nooooo! He told me that the opti will be repaired under the 7 year/70000 mile emissions warranty at no cost to me!! I guess that since they had written that this was needed there was no way they could now back out. I really suspect that there is not really any problem with my opti but I suppose I would be a total idiot not to take them up on the offer.

 

Doug, my car was 2 days past the 7 year warrantee when the opti was replaced. Who should I contact about trying to recieve a refund for the repair ?

 

My understanding is that the 7 year/70,000 mile limit only applies in California, Massachusetts and New York. Otherwise, if I am reading the warranty booklet correctly, the Federal warranty governs which is 2 years/24,000 miles.

 

Doug, I just spoke to a warranty Rep and she said that the 7/70,000 only applied to California. All other states emmisions parts are 5/50,000.

Congrats on your victory, If applied to me I would have saved $850.

 

PT
I saw this same ad for MAD
I'm a little sceptical that it's the real thing.
Seems to cheap.
How is it working for you?

 

The Mad ad is just for the Cap. "CAP ONLY", not the whole Opti-Spark
That's what MAD told me when I called just now.

Some expensive cap aye?

David

 

Way to go Doug.. :cheers:
May God help us from the GM Dealers.. :eek:

 

Car is going in to the dealer tomorrow for the opti (under emissions warranty) but I suppose they will try to have me pay for the wires. I'll try to negotiate a better price since they already have to mostly remove the wires to do the opti. GM Customer Service called me back today and I told them the dealer agreed to do the opti under the emissions warranty. I told them that I was pissed that the dealer would have made me pay, especially since I had previously asked the dealer if it was possible that this work might be covered under some warranty (they had initially said no). The Customer Service guy asked if I wanted to file a complaint against the dealer and I said not until the work was done and my car was out of there.

 

I am dubious of the cross firing wires.

The opti is know for falling apart after a while. The distributor should be no more than 320 bucks. Labor is about 180 (3 hours at 60/hour). Taylor wires run about 60 bucks a set and are 8 mm instead of the stock 7mm. Wires are a pain but 2 hours install time max. Should be 1/2 hour with waterpump off to replace the opti.

 

I can't believe some these stories I read. My dealer has beat regional and divisional customer service performance numbers for 17 years. (That's not say we haven't made our share of mistakes, nobody's perfect, you just have to own up to them and make it right) A simple thing we do at the time of write-up is run a GMVISS report on every vehicle. This gives the writer and tech warranty repairs performed, applicable recalls, and detailed warranty information with start and end dates/mileages for each individual warranty( emissions, corrosion, bumper to bumper, etc.). It takes all of 1 minute to run this report. Imagine taking your 7 year old car (way out of the standard warranty period) and having the dealer say "You have a bad wire and distributor and we'll get GM to pay for it under your Federal emmissions warranty. You can pick up the vehicle..."

Sorry you had to fight for something that was already paid for in the sales price.

 

That's about the only thing us Kalifornia guys get is the extended emissions warranty... BTW, I had my opti replaced (unnecessarily) under the GM emissions warranty last year at around 60K miles... GM also replaced the passenger side cat (unnecessarily) under the emissions warranty...

The opti turned out to be good, the wiring harness for it turned out to be the bad part... GM ate that one...

The cat was good as I had just passed emissions, the rear O2 sensor on that side had it's molded plug broken and wasn't making good contact accounting for the bad cat code... GM ate that one as well...

You may be out of luck since your's is a 95... It all depends on the date your car first went into service...

Dealerships also don't like warranty work because of the much reduced pay scale... My friend is a GM mechanic and told me how lousy the warranty pay scale is for repairs compared to customer pay... So I'm guessing that the dealerships in question try to get the customer to pay rather than file a warranty claim because there's more money in it... They will take advantage of you if you don't know the warranty details...

Another case of this was when the Delco battery died in my ex-gf's Cavalier after 2 years... Her father told me I was wasting my time trying to get it covered under the bumper-bumper warranty because they turned him down when it happened to him... He sure was upset when I came back in his daughter's car with a brand new Delco free of charge... The warranty lists the things not covered by the factory warranty, things like brakes, clutches, consumables, etc... The battery was not listed and the dealer took care of it...

Get to know your warranty details on your vehicle... It will pay in the end when you don't have to write that check for a warranty repair...

 

Brought the car in this morning and, maybe I am a bit overly skeptical, but I am starting to smell a rat. The service rep who told me to bring the car in said that the purpose is to replace the opti. However, when I dropped it off to the same guy it was as if we were starting from scratch again ("what seems to be wrong with the car", etc.) I reminded him that it missed and they recommended an opti and plugs. On the service order he wrote "engine has a miss when under load. . . advise". He said they would give it to the tech again to confirm and "probably" again find that the opti needs replacing.

How is it that the other day they were ready to keep my car to do this work but now they have to rediagnose? If they try and weasle out of the opti (that they already recommended in writing) I will be right on the phone to GM Customer Service who has already asked me if I want to file a complaint against the dealer for failing to inform me that this was an emissions warranty item.