Okay, what appeared to be a ignition problem seems much more complicated, and wont go away...

About 3 months ago, I was driving, hit a bump, heard a strange sound, and the engine sputtered and resumed... I stopped at a gas station filled up, and no spark...

I had the car towed to my hobby shop(military), I began to work on it 2-3 weeks later when my opti came in... figured, that it was a pretty self explanatory replacement. The car actually started to drive in the work bay, so i kind of patted myself on the back, thinking the car might start after it was cold, but didnt want to chance having a randomly dead car... so lets replace the part.

Car started back up, ran funny... noticed I had some burnt wires, replaced them with the Taylor crap... that ran terrible, I bought some custom fit otvc msd ones, it began to run without a miss, but still terrible...

replaced the coil with a MSD Blaster coil... still ran exactly the same... maybe a little fresher, but it was still knocking and retarding the engine under loads(pretty terrible HP)...

start driving one warm day, driving down a hill, engine is just probably getting hot, and the engine turns off... i was confused... I pushed in the clutch, started it back up... and its rolling again. get on the Autobahn(german freeway) and start to gas it... i think it got up to about 45 mph, and the engine cuts out on me... i listen to the car, its backfiring and making a hole heap of sound, smoke from behind me... so i decide to leave the clutch in, tried to start it, but no dice... never starts...

tows it to a GM specialty store, after 2-3 hours of tests they tell me the ICM is bad... I had also come to the same conclusion based on some research i had done...

I dont know if this had happened at the shop, or this happened at the autobahn when the car died, but my passenger side kooks still had the kook's gasket, my driveside i replaced with felpro because it was constantly leaking and never giving a good seal... well i noticed that all of the cylinders on my passenger side had blown holes in the head gasket, to me seeming like a pretty extreme detonation... thankfully the engine still runs and seems fine,

even after replacing the gasket with my other felpro, it still runs like ***, but mind you a lot quieter than i've ever heard it... same thing knocking and retarding under load...

so from my understanding, i've replaced ever part of the ignition
Opti,
sparks,
wires,
coil,
and ICM,
except the PCM, and the car is still knocking and still sputtering under a load...

is it safe to assume the timing chain is messed up since the car is running to such an extreme that the pcm cannot correct the timing via advance/retard?

I dont know what else to do, and i dont know how to replace the timing... i can imagine its pretty much the same as the opti, and actually replacing the timing chain after you open that part, but i'm under the impression that you need a special installation tool to get the gaskets in right...

anyhow, i am lost as to what to try next... and i wonder how much a mechanic might charge for the timing chain replacement? is it a 3-4 hour job?

EDIT: 1995 LT1 Camaro Manual Trans... Mods = Kooks exhaust and Lingenfelter intake... pretty sure thats all i got... and I'm sitting at 170k miles

 

Check the fuel pressure. Throwing parts at it gets expensive.