Gm's opticrap

[Baron Von Crowder]

My buddy's mom has a 93 camaro z28, bought it new, has like 110k on it now, and is in really nice shape. She is in love with it.

Recently, the optispark died. Shop replaced the water pump that was leaking and the optispark. In the last two(?) years, that optispark died, an oriely's brand was swapped in, and it has been replaced (under parts warranty) once already. It died again.

Apparently there are folks out there doing a coil on plug conversion, but there doesnt seem to be a kit, and since he nor I really now anything about it, we are looking for someone familiar with it to either do it or point us in a direction to getting it done or doing it ourselves.

Or any other option to solve the optispark unreliability issue.

[dville_gt]

i had a kit called a delteq that simply used the opti-spark for an optical sensor, and then used a northstar coil pack setup to do the spark..

http://www.delteq.com/

the real hot ticket these days is to use the 24x system like the ls cars

http://www.eficonnection.com/eficonnection/24x.aspx

basically you mount a cam sensor, a crank reluctor, then you use an lsx pcm along with lsx coils to handle the spark.

both options are pretty expensive and the 24x requires you get the car tuned as well

[Sleeper]

From what ive read buy gm parts.

[dville_gt]

From what ive read buy gm parts.

from what i've read swap in a cheap 5.3/harness/pcm!

[lowthreeohz]

seems like once the opti starts going out,they never stop crapping out. I have heard the best results with using a GM opti, otherwise go the route dville suggested.

[Baron Von Crowder]

From what ive read buy gm parts.

Yeah that didnt last any longer, in fact it lasted less. I dont know the whole story, but the part was not covered by GM. It was installed at an independent shop, buy a GM master tech, but none of that mattered.

from what i've read swap in a cheap 5.3/harness/pcm!

yeah, I think that could be done with a parts cost less that either of the kits you linked.

[Sleeper]

Make sure the vent tubes are not plugged.

[dville_gt]

Make sure the vent tubes are not plugged.

93 would be non-vented from the factory, but they might have put a vented unit on after the fact.

i killed 2 opti's in my life, 1 was when i lost a water pump, the other was the rotor exploding at the top of 1st gear.

my buddy has been through 4 or 5, last time i was at his house he had a opti parts bin that he repairs his opti's from!

ls > lt

[blue85350]

Optis suck so much I sold my camaro and bought a mustang. Honestly at this point none of them are made by gm anymore, so it's a crapshoot if they'll even work out of the box. The efi connections setup is nice, but unless you have a 96-97 transmission you're stuck with the tv cable and can't take advantage of that tuning option. There are a few guys that have used the vortec truck distributor and repinned the harness to work with it. There was even somebody on ls1tech that was working on a crank trigger set up to replace the opti, but i think that didn't work out. Sorry for the long post, but i just got rid of mine 2 weeks ago.

[Sleeper]

Im aware that 93 was a non vent, most everyone upgraded to a vented.

93 had a bunch of stupid one off stuff.

[UserX]

93 would be non-vented from the factory, but they might have put a vented unit on after the fact.

What kills Optis is moisture, and I'm betting they replaced the unit with a non vented one.

OP, have them replace it with a 95+ version with a vent/vacuum line, it runs to the rubber elbow on the TB. They shouldn't have any issues after that, as long as they don't blast it with water when washing the engine.

I had my Impala SS for over 10 years, never had a Opti issue. Keep them dry and they work just fine.

[Z06killinsbf]

Get a vented version and run the vent line into the cabin.

[HOOCBB]

What kills Optis is moisture, and I'm betting they replaced the unit with a non vented one.

OP, have them replace it with a 95+ version with a vent/vacuum line, it runs to the rubber elbow on the TB. They shouldn't have any issues after that, as long as they don't blast it with water when washing the engine.

I had my Impala SS for over 10 years, never had a Opti issue. Keep them dry and they work just fine.

When I was turning wrenches at an area GM dealer about 10 years ago, the shop foreman was credited with "fixing" the distributor cap/rotor issues on the 4.3L trucks and vans by adding a length of pipe insulation to the AC line that ran across the firewall right above the dist. I told him in the middle of the shop that he was overlooking the obvious dissimilar metal issue between the cap and rotor that was causing the electrolysis inside the cap on days of extreme humidity and rain.

All that to say, look for an opti dist that doesn't use different metals on the rotor and the cap terminals along with the 95+ vent/vacuum setup. However, converting to the LS style ignition may be the most cost effective in the long run, since the AC Delco parts are probably made in China now right along side the crap from Vatozone and O'reilly.

[UserX]

Get a vented version and run the vent line into the cabin.

Not sure why you would want to do that. Vacuum from the engine will keep it much drier than simply venting into the car.

[Sleeper]

Not sure why you would want to do that. Vacuum from the engine will keep it much drier than simply venting into the car.

Yuup.