dizwiz24

Ive been through optispark hell in the last month as I converted my 93's timing cover from the early model (driveshaft drive) to the late model (cam dowel drive) & vented style.


Be aware of cheap optispark knock-offs ($59 optispark on ebay), MSD units (some here have good luck, some bad), dynaspark (im told the newer units got cheapened up).

In my experience the only acceptable optisparks are:

1992 thru 1994 Gen I - OEM AC Delco (still available as new old stock)

1995 thru 1996 Gen II - Delphi (I believe Delphi made the gen II optisparks as OEM for our cars. I just purchased one from Mark at specialty parts direct and it was not a remanufactured unit. Though it did have the newer (less desireable cap on it - see below) and said 'Made in Mexico'. It appears to be good quality and works fine.

You are taking a risk with anything other than those 2 brands that I have named.

The cheap optisparks have:

1. non-mitsubishi logo'd optical sensors or 'used' optical sensors that have been spray-painted w/ black spray paint to make them look fresh.
2. warped optical reluctor disks. (hold sideways and spin, watch it move up and down (runout). The camaro lt1 guys say it will idle, but mis-fire at high rpm with these warped disks).

All new optisparks have the newer ' charcoal' caps with see-thru resin where you can see the electrodes. These work fine, but I tested resistance on the terminals and these terminals have a little more resistance than the OEM 'Tan' caps where you cant see the electrodes. So use one of the OEM 'tan' caps (where you cant see the electrodes) if you have one still in good shape.

So everyone knows what a mitsubishi emblem'd genuine opti spark sensor looks like, see the picture below. The picture is fuzzy, but the green arrow points to the diamond star logo.




Heres what started this whole mess for me:

I ordered a part # 1104032 - optispark gen II from gmpartsdirect and got substituted a remanufactured part # 19212300 in its place. I expected a 'new old stock' AC Delco gen II optispark. I contact them and they wouldnt do anything about it saying that if the original part is not available that 'I agreed (from their fine print) that they can substitute a replacement part'.

So fine, I looked it over and it looked ok. bearing, seals, etc. were all good. The only suspicious thing was the mitsubishi-embled sensor looked a little strange. Strange in that the 'diamond star mitsubishi emblem' was fuzzy looking. Fast forward, it had been painted over with black spray paint.

Well, that optispark ran for about 2 minutes in my car and then the car died and wouldnt restart until 6 hours later. It ran again for 2 minutes and died permanently. I ran thru FSM diagnostic procedures, even replaced my ICM with a known good unit, and everything pointed to this brand new 'AC Delco' remanufactured optispark.

Gmpartsdirect stated they would not take it back because I had installed it (how the 'f__K' am I supposed to know if it works or not without installing it). They told me to either take it to a gm dealer for warranty or go pound sand. I considered filing a credit card dispute, but it had been > 60 days.

The only good news is that my local gm dealer is warranty'ing the part (as gmpartsdirect is 'Flow Chevrolet'). They claim they should be able to get me a check for the amt I paid for it. We will see, as I do not want them to hand me another 'remanufactured' unit.

tombrammer

My original opti (93) went 100,000+ before it bit the dust. Replaced with MSD, very happy with it, vented is the way to go. Good luck.

dizwiz24

Thats great that you had good luck with the MSD. MSD has some characteristics that would make it more desireable than a stock one...if it works.

Many others here have not been so fortunate.

The thing that sucks about this part is its a PITA to pull. Its not like 'hey, you take your chances , but a good one will run forever'. Its too much work, downtime to just shoot blindly.

I did a lot of research on here and camaroz28.com before coming up with this post. If you dont like changing out an optispark and want a unit that will work 99.9% of the time, those 2 choices I named above are it.

Otherwise your percentage of a working unit (out-of-the-box) are less than that. A lot less than that for some of the $59 knock-offs.

94vettelover2

I'm dreading doing my Opti as its still original and "knock-on-wood",it still works fine.Us Opti guys get alot of flack for having the opti,but the Lt-1 is an awesome engine & don't get the respect it deserves.The opti location keeps the center of gravity low as there is not something on top of the engine.Granted,how much it does being lower really make a difference,but sure it helps.It also is a good looking engine too (all this IMO).Also if the belt breaks,the engine will not overheat.More people should look-up everything about the Lt-1(reverse cooling heads,lowering the center-of-gravity with the opti,engine won't overheat if belt breaks,4 bolt mains,takes boost well-cast iron block)

krackenvette

I just purchased, over time, optis out of wrecked low mileage cars. That way, I at least have the sensor and wheel. Bearings are easy to swap, but you can't buy them alone.

helphos

Sorry to hear you're having problems. What makes it worse is how much you have to put back together to tell if the thing works.
I got my Opti from Chandler. It's been a year and my car has never run better. It comes with a lifetime warranty, but I hope I never have to use it! But I put my harmonic balancer on with anti-seize compound, just in case!! That was the worst part of disassembly.

Good luck getting your Opti back in and running.

dizwiz24

If you hook up it up and spin the shaft, it will spark. So thats a quick and dirty test

Though I want to caution that my defective optispark would have passed that test because it would run for 2 minutes, then shut down and die.

I have already put a new 'Delphi' optispark in there, from mark@specialtyautoparts and it works great.

btw./ what brand is your optispark?

Is it remanufactured?

gravyhound

I bought a cheep china opti from a performance parts warehouse out of Ames, IA. off ebay for $75 shipped. The problem I had with it was the wheel that is pressed on that the disc and rotor mounts to was indexed wrong, about a 1/2 an inch off so it made it run way out of time and the disc was warped, it ran very bad but it worked and made it look like there was a prob somewhere else. So I tore both of my opti's apart and used the OE opti base being that the bearing was good and had to use the china cap & rotor and opti sensor cause the Mitsubishi one was bad, I also had to use the old disc cause it was not warped. And you do not have to put it all back togather to see if a opti is going to work. All you need to do is hook up the wires that are necessary for the eng to run I just used a C clamp on the temp sensor and clamped it to the fule rail so it would have a good ground and just put the balancer on finger tight. you can run the eng for a while to see if it will run right but just dont over heat the eng. for example I used my infrared temp scanner.

pcolt94

This is true as I have heard more stories and helped more people with these kind of problems.

You basically said it an can add not much more.

I paid the $300 years back for my GM opti. It's more money but look at the work some other have gone thru with weird and stubborn problems.

scotth48

I just replaced my opti 2 weeks ago with a Dynaspark unit I bought in 2008 which was just before another company took over. this was on my '93. It is vented with a vaccum line on the bottom and a hose on the top to draw in air of which I am routing that from inside the cabin with a small engine fuel filter to keep any dirt out. I did mess up and got 7 and 3 wires on wrong, but onc corrected rean great. very well sealed unit. The old one that came with the car had a screw off the rotor, seals cracked and you could see moisture damage. It looked very cheap and there was nothing to tell me what brand it was.

dizwiz24

yeah, i heard the early dynasparks (sound like you have one) were good units with a lot of good engineering.

I heard another company bought it and it got cheapened up

helphos

I got it from Chandler Motorsports. It's new build. They have a store on the auction site. When I got it The quality looked to be the same as OEM. I took it apart enough to put locktite on the screws that hold the rotor on (I had beeen reading a lot of threads on this topic, too!) and slipped it onto the spindle on the front of the engine. Once I got everything back together I crossed my fingers and started the engine. Success!! That was a year ago, and it hasnt given me a moment's trouble. Runs better than when I bought the car (3 yrs ago).
One of the problems with this kind of forum is that people who have a bad experience will post to every forum they can when they have a problem, whether they got a bad part or they installed it wrong- and Optisparks give you lots of opportunities to install them improperly.
I can't say that Chandler builds the best unit because it's the only one I've had to deal with. I can say that it does the job, and If I bought another Corvette and it ever needed an Opti, I'd skip all the other rantings on the forums and make the same choice I made for my vert- a choice based on reading these kinds of posts and separating out the evidence from the BS.

But, Hey! I never heard of that 'spin the rotor' test. Kewl! Thanks for that tip!

I'll step down from my soapbox now. All that ranting made me thirsty!