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The LT1 was available in several versions in the Corvette, Camaro, Firebird, Cadillac DeVille, Buick Roadmaster, Impala SS and Caprice.
It was available in either 265ci or 350ci versions.
The LT1 was first available in the Corvette 1992. Then the Camaro/Firebird in 1993. Then the big b-body sedans in 1994. The LT1 was retired for good after the 1997 model year in favour of the LSx family of engines.
The Opti was upgraded for the 1995 model year. It had a larger bearing and better sealing.
The LT5 used a lost spark system.
The LSx uses a coil per plug system.
Both are distributorless.
In the current GM fleet, no GM made vehicles use a distributor any longer. I can't speak for the captive imports (re: Chevy Aveo).
For that matter, I don't think any car sold in this country still use a distributor, but I am not sure about some of the lessor imports (Kia, etc).
Watching some hot rod show on Speedvision and they
were touring a accessory convention. Anyway, MSD
has come out with a new Billet replacement for the
opti that is adjustable. Looks pretty good. $499.00
retail.
Craig
'93 polo conv
Nope. GM learned it lessons well from the previous LT1 and LT4 designs and went back to a conventional distributor setup.
Really, just how much does a distributor cap for a C5 cost?
The optispark was not at all a bad concept, it simply suffered an unfortunate placement in the engine compartment that lead to potential problems. You hear about the opti all the time when it is broken and you never hear anything good about it because when it's working, nobody comments on it. I would be willing to bet that for every opti that has ever been replaced, there are 2 that have gone 100k miles without a problem.
The majority of the opti problems I've ever seen are on cars that are very infrequently driven and they allow moisture to accumulate and cause problems. Although the opti is one of the major failures, not getting your engine up to operating temperature and keeping it there for a reasonable amount of time, is hard on the entire engine. Also letting an engine just sit for long periods of time is a very bad thing.
Consider the typical Corvette life, it sits in a garage doing nothing until all but the prettiest days until it's aging owner decides that he's going to take it out for a spin, but at that he only drives it around the block because he doesn't want to rack up a bunch of miles on his precious baby.
The Opti-spark is far from perfect, but it is fully well capable of going well over 100k miles without service at all. Most opti spark problems come from owner abuse / neglect than from a problem with the design.
Consider the typical Corvette life, it sits in a garage doing nothing until all but the prettiest days until it's aging owner decides that he's going to take it out for a spin, but at that he only drives it around the block because he doesn't want to rack up a bunch of miles on his precious baby.
It wasn't that the Opti was a bad concept. It just suffered from not being fully developed (read: de-bugged) before technology made it obsolete. By 1995 they were much improved, FWIW. But, the mechanical distributor design was already in its twilight days even before the Opti was introduced.
It wasn't that the Opti was a bad concept. It just suffered from not being fully developed (read: de-bugged) before technology made it obsolete. By 1995 they were much improved, FWIW. But, the mechanical distributor design was already in its twilight days even before the Opti was introduced.
It was great on paper and in theory. Not so great in the field. Maybe if they used a w/p that would never leak it might have had a better reputation. But we all know that would never work. But the good news GM learned there lesson and never used that design again
I still wonder why they didn't just put the optispark distributor in the same place as every other SBC Distributor. I am sure it was due to space constraints but still. It certainly isn't a horrible idea and it works well it was just put in a very $h!tty place.
There was a guy a while back that created something called a "digispark" which was an optispark system contained within a regular distributor. Really cool concept that never seemed to take off. Would have been great for us LT guys.
04-17-2006, 12:42 PM
