I came home from my last event four weeks ago on a hook. Car just sputtered and died...

The shop said they found a loose ground wire and also that the exhaust was vibrating against the driveshaft loop. They drove it quite a bit and could not find any more wrong.

I went over Sunday and got the car and drove a couple of miles to the parts store to get some bug and tar cleaner. When I left the store the car just died. I pulled over and it had a hard time starting. I had to put the gas pedal to the floor to get it to start and a cloud of black smoke came out. I went another 1/2 mile or so and the same thing happened again. It happened twice more on my way back to my office and one of those times the car exhibited one extremely loud backfire as it was stalling out.

My un educated guess is fuel starvation and then it "loads up"...

Opti is new, coil is new, ICM is new, connections have all been checked.

I did notice the tach seemed to "bounce" up and down a bit during a couple of the stall outs.

I need a direction to look as this weekend is the last two points races of the season and I am less than one round of racing out of first place.

Otherwise the car feels strong, and has been running 12.0's at 110. Gas mileage has improved significantly since the lifters were adjusted a couple of months ago. I'm at a complete loss as to what to do.

Another issue which is unrelated, is the B&M Pro-Ratchet seems to not work correctly with the TCI 700R4 which was just rebuilt and new poly mounts for both tranny and motor installed. It doesn't catch between 1st and second gear. Currently it is configured to have only three gears but this is not acceptable long terms as the track is 97 miles from my home.

 

I know you said you checked all connections, but i would bet money on the opti pigtail harness being bad and corroded. My buddies car did the EXACT same thing, all the way down to eratic tach and no start.

 

I will check it again. I know those can be very fussy. It was replaced earlier this year.

The car is actually at the dealer about 1/4 mile from my office. They are actually a "good" dealer. They have a couple of knowledgeable techs plus they like race cars.

 

I had a caprice that did the exact same thing it ended up being a lose wire in the pig tail to the coil, it would shake around from the wind or bumps and cut the car off, the i would be messing around looking for why it cut off and bump that wire and the car would start, also i i kept trying to start the car the movment from the engine turniong over would sometimes be enuf to make the conetion.

The only way i found out that was the problem is when it would stop i had a friend crank the engine as i moved every wire one by one till i got it to start

 

I will check that too as my coil has a few taped up connections going to it...

 

Running out of options... Any more suggestions? Hoping to get to the track tonight...

 

New information: tach "bounces up and down like crazy when it dies. Even after it stops, key has been turned off, then turn key to "on" position without cranking, tach will "bounce". Car will not start when tach is bouncing. However after a few minutes of sitting car will turn over and start and run for maybe 1-3 minutes before it happens again...

 

See my posts in:
http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...highlight=tach

Heat related failure, new opti cured it for me.. no DTC's set.. hard one to diagnose..