These things fail so often, i am curious as to why and would like to do experiemnts on/with them. If you were interested in sending it to me, I would pay for shipping. The opti cant be hacked up, although, it can be dissasembled but never taken apart is much preffered as I need to do some checking before it gets ripped into too far. No cap or rotor is fine also but would be nice if included. Also, a little detail and history behind the failure or problem would be great.

most problems are either the bearings frying or water/coolant leaking into them. but...you got mine when i change it out...just dont delete the thread because that's how i'm going to track you down

shame i just threw 3 away last week -

my car was eating them for a while.

Severous01, yea brotha, definitley look me up when you get that puppy off, much appreciated...

Thats sad enough to make a grown man cry....... for scientific purposes....

Thanks for the thought tho.

If you want, you can have my old one......161,000 miles. We THOUGHT it was bad and replaced it.....but it was an intake vacum leak. It may have the starting signs of failure....but I got to dig it up to see if it was disassembled in anyway.
Mike

I'd send you mine, but I think I'm going to keep it around. I replaced it, then tore it apart, and found out it was simply a blind sensor. I cleaned it and it works like new. Kind of a backup plan.

actually, whatever anything anyone want to send me, thats fine, I just need the story behind it also for my notes.

Just curious because mine just died. What does the coolant water leaking into the opti do to it? You go through water all the time driving in the rain.

yes but the way your waterpump sits on top if you ever bust you waterpump it drips right down into the opti rain hits it but does not drop in it plus im sure the antifreeze is worse than rain when it gets in it. thats how mine went bad was the waterpump

Thats what happened to mine too. to bad you can t just fix that part and put it back in. Does anyone have a link for replacing an opti I am going to do it myself.

Thats one of the things I want to check and test. Gotta be a way to make these things bullet proof, its just basic electronics. First thing to do thugh is try to get an idea of what is failing and try to track down the exact scenario that kills them.

Only thing that is still here to stay since I have been away for 3+ years is opinions, I am gonna get to the bottom of this damn it, lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The "leak" has in many cases been traced to the seal on the wiring harness tower. That's where a "weeping" water pump is putting the drops of coolant.... right on the harness connector. I've seen a couple people claim to have improved the waterproofing by sealing up the tower with RTV and using dielectric grease on the connector.

I took my original Opti off in 1998 when I started getting frequent DTC 16 for the low res pulse. The engine would stumble off idle, surge slightly up to 2,000RPM and have a definite loss of power from 4,800RPM on up. When I removed the Opti at 50K miles (only because of the frequent codes - not because of a total failure) the cap/rotor was just like new (in spite of running an MSD-6A for 40K miles). But the rear section of the housing was filled with rust particles, mostly from the low carbon steel parts used for the shaft and the piece the optical wheel attached to. Rust had started packing into the optical sensor slot, apparently blinding the LED/receptor. The bearing had also reached the point where it was difficult to turn the rotor by hand.

The replacement was the Electromotive "Opti-Eliminator", but that had problems of its own. Now I run only the optical sensor, feeding an aftermarket ECU, and driving 8 LS1-sytle coils, and the system has been faultless for 6 years.

I will look into that and see. I am hoping to get a few in that have stories about them being hosed by the water pump so I can do some testing on them as well.

Any one else wanna donate a few this way?