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I am having trouble with my 92' lt-1 which I am beginning to beleive may be the opti. Looked on ebay and could not understand the price difference between units, from under a hundred to five hundred bucks. Which are worth fooling with and which ones are junk. Thanks in advance.
This is the problem as I see it with Optisparks being made today. You just can't be assured that the Delco/Delphi part will not give you problems, and you can't be certain that the aftermarket eBay cheapos will crap out on you in a week. It's maddening, really.
Peoeple have examples of the OEM stuff going bad quickly; others have had theirs last a long time. Still others have had the aftermarket units be reliable, and others still will claim they've been through four bad aftermarket units and they'll only go with OEM from now on.
That said, the Petris unit would seem to be the best combination of OEM sensor with modified, vented cap. And as far as I can tell, every one is hand inspected. I think that's part of the problem, these other manufacturers just aren't testing enough of them to be statistically significant and catch all the bad units that are making it through.
I am having trouble with my 92' lt-1 which I am beginning to beleive may be the opti. Looked on ebay and could not understand the price difference between units, from under a hundred to five hundred bucks. Which are worth fooling with and which ones are junk. Thanks in advance.
There are so many things that can cause "mis-fire" symptoms on the LT-Gen II engines. The opti-spark seems to get the first blame, but can often be the least offender. Plugs, wires, coil, ecm, fuel pressure regulator, fuel pump, ground wires, seem to be the more common offenders and alot cheaper/easier to fix when they are. If you're having misfire troubles, check these first if you haven't already.
When I had my hotcam installed, I had ordered a cheaper cap and rotor replacement, it was so cheaply made, we couldn't even get the wires on it. Went with GM ac/Delco, about 60K mi later, no troubles.
It's probably got the same chance of being reliable as any of the others I'd guess. There's only a couple of places these things are made, and most of them don't use the most important part of the originals, the Mitsubishi optical sensor, so one's as good as the other I would imagine.
There has been speculation that as far as parts content and origin of manufacturer go, this one is the same as the the Chandler unit, is the same as the Cardone unit from Advance AP and AutoZone, which is the same as some of the other ones you can buy off of eBay. If that's true, seems like it would be better to buy it at Advance/AutoZone with their lifetime warranty so you can just walk on over to the parts counter for a replacement when it dies (and you will be walking, 'cause your car will be dead!).
It would be awesome if someone could get their hands on 4 or 5 different Optis from the different sellers and open them up for comparison, and post the results here.
My problem may not be the opti, I am just checking out opti sources while I await the arrival of my service manuals. Tonight I started the car in garage with lights off, no sparks were evident anywhere. The petris units sound like the way to go.