took it out one more time...coming off an off ramp holding it in second about half throttle..it nosed over pretty hard and caught in a blink of an eye,but hard enough to get a crazy look from the ol'lady..started cruising about 10 miles and nothing...started my turn around at another ramp and gave it all she had,and did fine until i let off in 4th and started to push pedal and i recieved a small stumble...as we made it to a stop light as i pushed the clutch in and coasted to light..came to a complete stop car idled down to normal then died...started right back up and the take off was rough as hell cutt'n coughing stumbling then caught..came to a stop and it died again..fired up no problem ....the next light it didn't die or anything and drove the last mile fine then i let her sit and idle...and you can hear something not right like a miss or something....true story and i'm sticking to it

 

one more thing i forgot to mention..before i swapped coils i noticed that blue glow on the coil square bracket holder,and i seen some arcing from coil wire tagging the water pump.
i have put three new ones on and a new coil wire today and still have that blue corona glow..it's faint in strength,but not right...i also seen arcing from coil tagging the head also..

so is this a burnt wire or opti spark?...it does this cold/warm/hot ect

 

try using the dielectric grease for the plug wires and the coil to opti.... I had this problem back in the day on my old elky it looked like forth of july near all my plugs, I used some of that and made sure the car was properly ground(block and batt) Then it went away and I had the same sort of stumble but went away at higher rpm...

 

chevy dude ... did yours ever die when you came to a stop?

about the grounds..i noticed my ground is tied into that red block thing..on my mustangs and my cj5 which has a 350 from a 1970 camaro i always grounded from battery to block and a ground from frame to block...i never trusted these ground blocks...

also while car was running i pulled 1 through 7 from cap...and all had a nice blue spark but 7 i had to almost put boot back on to see or hear a spark,plus it seemed the idle speed went up on on 7??

i'm really confused how the opti spark is bad if when i tested cold/hot and recieved the same results when tested?

i have been reading up on it,but would really like to read something in more detail..

 

This thread is getting confusing. It started out as "Power Addicts", and then grabbem88 tacked his problems on, highjacking PowerAddict's thread. Its hard to tell whom people are responding to with their posts.

While the problems appear similar, it might be better if each person had their own thread, to avoid the confusion.

 

Sounds like the high-voltage section of the opti is bad; which is the section that typically fails. Due to the design of the optispark, the high-voltage traces have to cross each other. As the opti wears, the insulation between these traces can break down and cause arcing between traces; (ex: 7 is supposed to fire, but it travels to 5 instead because it's a less resistant path). This can be amplified with bad plug wires or shorted/arcing plug wires.

 

yeah sorry about that,but the reason i took over was because i'm the new owner of the z28 and power addict is trying to help me figure it out.

he's away at college and i'm getting ready to leave as well for school for railroad so we are under limited time frames here.

so if you want me to start a new thread i'd be glad to but the fella's that have replied so far has been awesome so far..again sorry for confusion

 

yeah the high voltage part being the cap and rotor, I mean it was designed so you wouldn't have wires crossing each other.(it works just like a normal distributor only after the rotor routes the spark in firing order it then sends it via traces so the order on the outside is split into the two banks and in cylinder order not firing. So they can then be routed to each plug via plug wire without having to cross another.

Any arching outside of the combustion chamber is bad. You need to fix all of the arching.
You really cant help if its arching inside the cap, but if you pulled the wires already you should have used dielectric grease when you reinstalled and on both ends of the wires.(or where ever you had previously seen arching) If all of the external arching has gone and it still does the same thing I would look into a cap/rotor. I really dislike the opti as the last 3 I have opened where either busted or on the verge of. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

ok i finally got the ses light to work..no bulb,and a bad connection..

i did post a new topic,but i think this applies to both..

codes 15;22;23;and code 41...i checked voltage and it's 4.94..tps was replaced a couple days ago...iat was unhooked yesterday when i took it for a spin..whoops

and confused why my new ect is bad so i need to check that out

and last 41...is this opti spark related or a cooked wire somewhere?

 

ok, if you had stuff disconnected you will have codes try resetting them and running the car again. Check the codes that come back.

 

well both wires were cut for the ect to ecm/pcm...ran car at idle shut her off no codes

i owe my wife dinner since she was the one that found the wires...thank gawd for women gear heads!

going for drive now cross fingers!

 

everything seems fine no problems driving and performance,but for some reason now my fans dont work

1 step foward two steps back

 

so what did you decide was actually the problem? Is it still running okay?

 

man i looked over everything so maybe improper temp range for ecm to activate fans?

or a faulty ect?

if relays were bad they wouldn't come on at all right? ie. diagnostic check

 

How do you know the fans aren't working? Did you let the car warm up to almost redline on the temp gauge and they didn't turn on? How did you test this?