There were a few others who expressed the same concerns.

If it works....great!
If it performs...fantastic!

There are several ways about going at this and seeing the ideas come to surface is proof enough that (some) people want to get away from the LT1 PCM.

 

Let’s say that I could buy that opti wheel for 150$ (<<didnt cost me near that much) there is 2$ worth of electronics to make it work. In total I have 152$ worth of specific parts to make this work. I will agree that your system is slightly better but the cost doesn’t justify the difference in price. and its not nearly as fun as designing and building someting my self.. i dont take pride in buying stuff.. i take pride in building stuff..

Buying parts from efi connection.
24x Crankshaft Reluctor - LT1 and LT4 Engines $275.00 USD
24x Crankshaft Position Sensor $100.00 USD
1x Camshaft Position Sensor for lt1 (guess probably more)>>$300.00 USD
97 lt1 Timing Cover $80.00 USD
-------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL $755.00 USD


My second Idea was to use a 14$ ls1 reluctor mounted to the lt1 balancer. And a simple bracket to hold the stock ls1 crank sensor.. then I would make a aluminum plug on the lathe that would fit in the seal hole on the lt1 timing cover and use the ls2 cam sensor to trigger of a bolt on reluctor on the cam gear. This could be made with a total of 200$ worth of parts.. the worst thing about this idea is you would have to paint the crank wheel so it wouldnt rust. (again not a problem on my summer driven car) or you would have to replace a 14$ part every 10 years..

 

also i have got a complete harness with computer and coils for 100$ out of a 99 Chevy truck. the harness i am going to pull out the coil section and re pin in the sensors fans ect from the lt1 harness.

the 99 truck pcm can run 2 and 3 bar OS's and is basically the same as a 411 pcm (will run the same OS) i would recommend anyone looking at this to go this route as junk yards double or triple the price when the parts come off a camaro or vette..

if anyone is intrested in repinning their harness i have the truck, 95lt1 and 2000 camaro diagrams.

 

That does not imply a crank signal from the cam. I agree that it is a means of determining engine position...however accurate or inaccurate it may be.

The 96-97 LT1 engines all have a 4x crank sensor to determine crank position for misfire detection. The LS1 PCM is also a system that uses crank position for misfire detection. Until it is tried and tested, we don't know how the LS1 PCM will behave with a crank signal from the cam.

For OBDII systems, did GM (and other auto manufacturers) choose to get the engine position from the crankshaft because of timing chain wear up to 200,000 miles? Or is there something more to it? I don't know.

 

Not 100% sure, but due to the sensitivity of the missfire detection I believe the signal has to be from the crank. If it's installed on the cam the slight bit of slack in the chain might be enough to fake the PCM into a Missfire code since the PCM determines time/speed between combustion events, if the cam is speeding up/slowing down due to slack it might be enough to set it off..

Plus the cam is spinning at 1/4 the speed of the crank, the problem might be amplified.

Can you simply turn off misfire detection?

 

According to the GM service manual, diagnostic for P0300 - Misfire Detected, the following conditions are known to cause a misfire DTC:

• running out of gas
• restricted fuel filter
• variable thickness brake rotor
• drive shaft out of balance
• certain rough road conditions

It sure does sound like the crank signal is rather sensitive.

I see processing enablers and MIL light settings for misfire (in EFILive), but I don't know what the consequences are of disabling everything to do with misfire detection.

 

You can turn off misfire in the codes perse.

You wouldn't have a FACTORY style system. but it should work. I had thought about it and more or less tried to muck it up using the fast mounting hardware, but since I have a supercharger, it meant that my hardware options for external mounting were limited and I had to rearrange a couple of things.

The system could be affected by external factors and it wouldn't be in a "self contained" system.

You can buy your wiring harness from an ls1 car and repin it, it will be cheaper. All you would need is the reluctor and cam sensor.

Wait till i get some pictures of my setup so you guys can see what I am talking about.

 

actually your cheaper off to use the lt1 harness and repin it into the ls1 connectors.. then add the crank cam and coil wires.. this way you can start off with more readaly available lower priced truck harness and you allready will have all the coneectors in your engine harness where they need to be.. if you start with a ls1 camaro harness you may have to move some stuff and it seems like the ls1 camaro harness goes for about 200$ for the harness itself. you can get the truck harness and coils for under 100$

 

got the car running on the ls1 computer today... i repinned the lt1 harness into the connectors and addded the in the coil crank and cam sensors

i was worried at first as it would barely stay running then i pulgged in the other coil harness and it runs like a champ now..

dont mind the smoke there was some antifreeze on the downpipes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btAtQtIe3LY

 

i am hoping you have yours running?

 

jaja.. not quite.. i was unable to fire up today.. Dead battery... Ran into a few problems installing the timing cover, that took me 2 hours off of my day... But the car is almost ready... and I am hoping to fire up tomorrow!

Point is... I like to drop the oil pan when installing the timing cover, and that was really a pita... not remove it, but just drop it... In a fit of anger I destroyed the oil cooler lines and almost peeled off one of the bolts from the PAN. That alone didn't let me drop the pan to install the timing cover in order to not damage the oil pan gasket and then have a freaking LEAK.

Well.... I drank some coffee... Found a 3/8 socket and a fine racketing... voila... it bolted off... what a relief...

After that it was pretty much straight forward, I just was extremely tired and didn't have the battery ready...

 

yeah i didnt have to drop the oil pan...

 

Well.. at least I wont have any issues if my water pump leaks!!! or if i get mud or heavy rain on the road :P

 

The cam rotates at 1/2 the speed of the crank.

 

You gonna offer a kit?