The upper radiator hose on my '92 broke and sprayed the engine compartment. At first I thought it was no big deal, but then when the car wouldn't start, I knew the Optispark was trashed. I pulled the waterpump and Optispark off of the engine today.

I need to replace the Optispark... my question is this, does anyone have a recommendation on whether I should buy a brand new AC Delco unit versus a rebuilt unit from Autozone??? There is a big price difference, $386 for the AC Delco versus $150 for the Autozone rebuild with lifetime warranty.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Scott

 

My thoughts are that a life time warranty means very little when there is A LOT of labor involved th take the part on and off.My experience, and many others here had the same experience with Auto Zone is their parts are not as good as new factory parts. I guess this falls under, "you get what you pay for".

 

Call Jeff Koop. Probably can do better on that AC Delco price. Make sure you tell him you area a forum member.

 

I was told by a fellow forum member that JUST ordered and received a new opti from Jeff Kopp that he paid $258, with two day shipping! That is an amazing price, considering that beats gmpartsdirect.com by about $25 when you factor in their outragous shipping.

At that price, why buy a rebuild when they usually do not come with the optical encoder, which is another $80-90.

Mike

 

Neither. Go with the $500 billet aftermarket version that has improved bearings & a captive o-ring cap seal & no lower cap to leak around the wiring harness with it's shrinking foam seal....and most importantly, it already comes with a later style $200 vented cap (and base)!!! All 3 root causes of failure in the original design were corrected.

The GM units are prone to failure every 5 years. They require modifications to keep them from failing and they still have bearing weaknesses. To properly upgrade the early Optispark, you need a new Optispark PLUS a new later style cap for another $200.

The Auto Zone unit is a marginal salvage takeoff that's been cleaned up, and most importantly....it is missing a $200 distributor cap and rotor assy. It has varying quality like any used electrical part. Most are junk. The Optispark is not something to penny pinch on.

 

Rick, do you have a link or more info on the opti spark you are recommending? thanks, Dan :steering: :steering:

 

Out of the 2 choices you list I would absolutely go with the OEM Delco. NO Question!

The suggestion that rick has is interesting though ... I would also like to know more about that aftermarket part.

 

I believe he is talking about this :
http://www.dynotecheng.com/dynaspark.htm

I don't know anyone that has one yet, but it looks like a quality part.

 

Thanks for the link. tried to open it, wouldn't go. But thanks. Dan

 

There's ~$100 price difference between the early ('92-'94) and the later ('95-'96) optispark models. Amazingly, the later, improved version is the cheaper one! I paid ~$380 for mine last October. I was too lazy to to try the conversion to the vented system.

Steve

 

How do I contact Jeff Koop?

 

Jeff is 18carfan here on the Forum and his e-mail is superchevyparts@worldnet.att.net You can call him at 800-728-8267

 

I think this is the correct link. http://www.dynotech-eng.com/dynaspark.htm :steering:

 

Thanks for the link. this might be my next opti. Dan :steering:

 

The billet Dynotech sounds good but when my 95 Opti goes I will use the warrantee from Mr GoodWrench Chevy shops that cover labor and parts for life to original owner. It sounds so good I am almost looking forward to having it done : )

 

I ordered one of those DynoSpark's back in December when the group buy price was still on. I was told it would ship in the week between Christmas and New Years. When I didn't receive confirmation of that shipping, I was told it would ship the first full week in January. At the time I ordered it, I was told my credit card wouldn't be charged until "just before" the unit shipped. January 22 came around and I looked at my latest credit card statement and lo and behold, a $505 charge from Dyno Tech Engineering was there - I still hadn't received my Dyno-spark. Some correspondence informed me that I was like order number 17 of 20 and number 16 had just gone out the door and I would have my part as soon as possible. I emailed and informed them that unless I had the part by the following Tuesday, I would cancel my order. Wednesday came around...I cancelled my order. I received a voice mail from the president of the company stating that he had tried to work with me, but that his vendors weren't being timely with him and as a gesture of good will he would refund my money AND send me a new part. A week later, I had to call to see where my money was - he told me that he was going to send it in the mail along with the new part when it came. I told him I was impressed by the thought, but only concerned at this point with getting my money back. He assured me that he would put the check in the mail the next day: That DID happen. I received the check, but I still haven't seen any part.

I am the guy that ordered the opti from Jeff at that great price. The Vette had been off the road for two months longer than it needed to be. Oh well, running great now.

Good luck

 

Thanks for the information about your experience with dyna spark. Sounds like Jeff is the man. Dan :steering:

 

On behalf of DTE, I will explain our position better. JayH's description is completely correct and accurate as he states it here.

Soon after the initial protypes were built and successfully tested, we were geared up to begin assembly on the third run right after Christmas, but we had to select another company to produce the CNC'd cases because the first company was dragging their feet in completing our order on time and keeping up with our demand. We had anticipated shipping out the third run the first week of January before this dilemma had presented itself, hence the delay.

The newly selected company was eager to accept our business and they agreed to accelerate the completion time after we portrayed our urgency to fill our increasing order backlog. We had to wait until they developed an entire new CNC program to manufacture components due to the program that was written from the last company wasn't entirely compatible with their OS. In fact, the new company had found better and more efficient ways to manufacture the same component which ended up to be a bonus in design quality of the part, to all who was still waiting.

From the timeline the machinist had described to us, we had again planned to start production the latter portion of the first week of January, hence the billing of everyone's CC. (right before shipment)

To our dismay, there were again multiple delays from the machinist during re-prototyping, which further delayed shipment. Finally, near the end of January, he was producing components for us for which we were practically taking them from his hands as he finished machining them. We then sent them all to be coated at the anodizers which went without a hitch.

We sent emails to all of customer's informing them of the progress and expressed our apologies for the delays. As a gesture of good customer satifaction, we included a DTE t-shirt with every order free of charge AND informed JayH that we would absorb the Next Day Air shipping charges that he selected, ship his part Next Day Air anyway and only charge him the regular ground rate.

Everything went well with assembly until we found a flaw in the bearing bore spec. that put it undersize by .001", which caused bearing bore wall to gall when the bearing was pressed in. Due to the extremely intricate design of the internal case structure, 11 of the 20 completed cases had to be scrapped, which meant further delays in correcting the problem and machining replacements.

All of the bugs are worked out now and we are back on track. I spoke to JayH and expressed our deepest apologies for the delay in getting him his parts and we agreed to refund his money at his request, in addition to giving him a brand new unit free of charge for his diligent patience and time. He should receive it in a few days and we certainly thank him for his continued patience as long as he could. His satifaction means a lot to us here at DTE.

In closing, I hope that everyone understands what we have been going through to get this order filled. Sometimes a company suffers setbacks and delays when bringing something to market, and we were no exception. I think that a true measure of a company's integrity is how they handle and treat their customers during this time and that is why we have taken these measures to satisfy our supportive customer base by doing what is right and treating them with respect. I know how frustrating it can be waiting for parts to arrive when your vehicle is down, so I sympathize with JayH and others.

As a final note, we are back on track and sending out another run Monday and Tuesday, with JayH's being one of them. :) We have adopted measures around here so that this scenario will not happen again and we appreciate JayH's input as he is still one of our valued customers, as is everyone. Without you all, we would not exist and we encourage any and all questions and comments from our current customers as well as future ones. Thanks for your time and have a great week everyone! :seeya

Sincerely,
Phil Rickard, President/Co-owner
Dynotech Engineering, Inc.

 

I appreciate all of the good input. I decided to order a new AC Delco Opti from Jeff Kopp. Price was $344 vs. $386 from gmpartsdirect.com. As someone else mentioned, the early LT1 model is about $100 higher than the improved '95-'96 model that is vented with vacuum lines (go figure!). I'm planning to retrofit the '96 vacuum harness onto the new Opti.

Scott

 

Glad to hear everything is back on track, but I still undersand that there is a 2 (more likely 3) week lead time on any order placed today. Is this realistic? My car is dead right now and I'd prefer a quality unit, but don't know how long I'm willing to wait to get one.

Thanks,
Sam