The optispark in my 1994 hasn't been giving me any issues really, but the car is coming up on 80k miles and at some point I got it in my head that the lifespan of the water pump was somewhere in the range of 75k miles, so I've been getting a little nervous. I decided it probably couldn't hurt to get ahead of the curve on this.
I figure since the original opti isn't giving me any trouble, I may be able to salvage more than just the optical sensor. If that's so (which I obviously won't know until I get to the thing) then I figure I could pick up the cap + rotor Petris offers, clean and replace viable internals and then retrofit the venting harness (also from Petris). My first worry is that this scenario may be too optimistic. If any of the other components are beyond saving, then what? I don't really want to purchase a full opti kit from Petris, since they're pricey and out of stock currently; nor MSD because... more expensive. SacCity has reasonably priced optis (which I've read are quality) but they only sell optis with non-vented caps for my year. I figure I could get that and the cap + rotor from Petris then swap out the cap (would I even need to swap out the rotor too?) and be done there. I don't know if this is really the ideal way to go about this in case my original is beyond saving, it seems like a lot of potentially unnecessary hoops, though I'm not opposed to the work (in fact I'd very much like to do it), I just want to make sure these sound like "reasonable" plans, or if I'm missing something somewhere along the way that'd be simpler and still achieve the same results (high quality vented opti).
Or if I've gotten waaaay ahead of myself with this elaborate scheme, please let me know. I'm really not an expert... but I'd sure like to be!

 

Do the water pump. Inspect the opti. Clean it, reseal it. Throw it back on for another 80k miles.

 

With 80 k miles I would replace the cap and rotor. Dan