akros

My LT-4 has 45,000 on it and seems to drop power when shifting between 1st and 2nd just for a split second.

dizwiz24

what happened with mine was I had a high RPM hesistation that occasionally kicked in around 4000 to 5000 RPM under hard acceleration. The car would accelerate hard and then kind of cough, shaking the car, and then take off hard again. It caused me to lose a couple races at the strip.

I changed plugs and wires and it made this stuttering go away. But I took the opti spark apart while doing a cam change. The rotor was rusted, and the bearing was shot. Had to replace with a vented one. $627 for parts

bogus

the first thing is a code 16... that is the low-res signal for the injections.

you will get a high rpm stumble.

with your vintage, and where you live, I would not expect your opti being bad. the opti on the 96's are much more durable, and should last over 80k. I have heard of them lasting over 100k, actually... so, unless yours got soaked, I would not expect that to be the problem.

I would lean more towards a tune up. you might have a bad wire or wires. run the car at nite and make sure there are no sparks or signs of sparks jumping. if so, there is a loose or bad wire. your coil coulda packed it in, too, but I would expect that to have other less than pleasent side effects.

another thing, run some BG 44K through the tank. does wonders for the injectors.

if it is the opti, you can call 1-800-728-8267, ask for Jeff Kopp, he be da parts man!!! and since yours is already vented, expect about 240.00 for the part. you will also want a new waterpump.


[Modified by bogus, 10:36 PM 1/7/2002]

moffitt

My symptoms: slight stumble or dropped cylinder at idle, it was very intermittent, a sudden jump on the tach. It got worse, much worse until it was replaced. At the end it would seem to just shut off, but would catch and run fine again for short periods. Was worse in traffic with high underhood temperatures. It never acted up until it got good and hot. Looked awful inside when removed and disassembled, full of rust dust and the bearing was terrible!

darkredlt1

I felt that the car needed a tune-up. The average gas mileage dropped. My LT1 was still running smooth and I had to replace the water pump and asked the mechanic to check the opti and he found a rusted mess that was on its last legs.

Justin Scherer

Difficulty starting on rainy mornings. At first it was minor but it got progressively worse. But then mysteriously it would begin behaving itself and run fine for months. Then one day it began to miss on the highway and just flat out quit leaving me stranded in an intersection. It was a night in a motel and an expensive flatbed trip back home to my mechanic.
Justin

Silver Bullet 99

Mine had a slight buck while driving for a long trip at highway speeds (75-80mph for about two hours). It happened about about 20-25 times during the trip. Then later that night - the car started up and stalled for the very first time (and last time so for!!) when I put it into reverse. The next day I took her to the track for my very first High Speed training class at Summit Point Raceway in WV. The instructor got 3 good laps in - nothing too heavy and I was rounding a corner about 70mph on lap 1.5 and the car just died. That was it - never could get it refired again. Folks there tested all sort of things - no codes, no spark, no nothing. Towed it back to PA (thank god for AAA plus), dropped it off at my local Chevy dealership and they said waterpump and opti went - $1500.00 repair job. That was at 125k miles so I guess i'm lucky in a way.

C4 4Me

A slight itching and discoloration of the skin, ooops, wrong forum :D

dwaltz

When my optispark went bad, my feet got sore. I had to walk to a phone. It wasn't that far as this happened as I turned off on the return road at the end of my 4th run of the night at the strip. The damn thing just quit. No warning whatsoever. Driving along, check engine light comes on, car dies. Restart car, misses badly and knocks so bad that everyone said I had thrown a rod. Had it flat bedded to the shop and found the optispark cap had so many carbon tracks that it looked like a spider web and #8 contact was completely dead. The water pump showed that it had been weeping a very little bit from the weep hole on the bottom of the pump, probably for some time, but there was no sign of any water damage anywhere let alone around the optispark. I'm gonna get the magazine article out that covered the LT1 when it was first announced and re-read it. I'm not sure that I remember the part in the article where they mentioned that I'd have to spend close to a couple grand to replace my distributor cap and water pump (not to mention the water temp sending unit that was obviously designed to break at the mere sight of a wrench coming close to it..the design worked) Of course, I take into account that the car has a lot of miles on it, almost 30,000, so I can't expect the mind-bendingly expensive and impossible to get at optispark to last forever! I love my car but I'll bet the guy that came up with the optispark design is somewhere out of the country living under an assumed identity.

:)




[Modified by dwaltz, 5:10 PM 1/10/2002]

CowboyNVette

You know your probably right, guess I better start saving up on a new one myself, 56,000 miles here. :smash:

bogus

he is hanging with DB Cooper....