son of a bitch! I had it towed to a shop I was referred to, he calls me up right now and says he cant figure out the problem. All the wires are fine, and none are crossed, all are connected. battery is new, alt. tested good. He told me it is doing the same thing i had it do

first start up, takes longer than normal to start, but does, idles loudly(open ypipe), then stalls. after that just does not want to start. just keeps cranking. brand new coil, plugs, wires, autozone opti that I replaced back in december(no miles on it since purchase)

people tell me my timing is off, but how when its controlled by the computer. they tell me to 180* the dist., but shoeboxes guide says as long as the cam dowel lines up with the opti slot at number 1 TDC, it will be in perfect time.

i,i cant deal with this **** any longer. its driving me nuts, i am ready to get the car towed back and put it up for sale at this point.

what should I call the mechanic back for to ask him if he checked a certain thing out. he told me he never see's these engines much so he doesnt know much about them

 

THink u took it to the wrong mechanic..

Ok so I take it u ruled out fuel issues by watching the fuel pressure.. and watching the fuel pressure when it dies...

So u bought an entire optispark???
or the cap and rotor part from autozone which uses the original optical lense and housing?

How long did the car run after the opti install? And what else did u change. Ur saying u bought the opti in december but have not driven the car or put any miles on teh opti?


I had an autozone cap and rotor once. The car ran for 20 seconds.

Also your ICM (attaches below your coil) can keep the car from running.'

But if your saying u put that autozone opti in and started it up.. and it started for a minute or less then died... its the opti... Also check for corossion on the electrical harness that attaches to the top of your opti spark (will be plain as day Blue in color). ANd u should also change the vacuum harness that attaches to the bottom of your opti (if u have a vented opti).

 

Did you change your timing chain? If so, are you sure the cam was lined up right?

 

i bought just the opti. I had to reuse my cap and rotor. it would run cold for over a minute, or until it got hot, then it would idle really low and sound cammed. Im guessing it did that because of the low coolant/large amount of air pockets(i didnt know WTF i was doing when tryin to fil the cooling system) hence the reason it happened when warm. after it warmed it would start then just stall.

could the other new ignition components be held back by the 90k mile ICM or cap and rotor?

 

ive never had the timing cover off

 

People that are tellling you to 180 the distributor apparently don't know anything about an LT1. They are thinking SBC, rear mounted distributor.

I would suspect the opti, too. (as much as I hate to say it). Some observation with a scan or data logging program might be useful. Might even be flooding, too.

 

thats what i tell them about the opti and being 180 off shoebox, its a standard type dist.

i put a thinner head gasket on when I Swapped them out, could the higher compression and 5 month old gas not be mixing right?

 

You said you reused the cap and rotor?

I don't know if it's that for sure, but it's highly suspect.

When I took my car in they used an automotive oscilliscope? to check for distribution across all the cylinders and had it narrowed down that morning to the cap and rotor, and they even told me exactly what the problem was, that my 1 & 7 terminals were bridged, causing them to fire at the same time. Just because there's spark doesn't mean it's showing up at the right time. I would say it's something in the ignition since when the parts are cold they may not show symptoms of damage until they're warmed up.- My car would run great when cold, 5 minutes later it was clacking and backfiring allover the place.

You should take it somewhere else that you trust and see what they can figure out.

 

i dont really have any other place to take it too except the dealership*shuder*, since they deal with these cars often im sure, but the fact that it could be opti related, dont need to pay all my money to have it replaced.


if the opti IS suspected to be the top culprit, im gonna call up jason cromer and have a complete unit rush delivered for sunday(only day i can work on the car )

 

I say screw the optispark, go with a delteq system. It's kinda pricey at ~$800, but its well worth it.

It shouldnt be tough to install and it will save you $$$ over goin to the freakin dealership.

 

oh great, this board telling me its ignition related, and another board is telling me its something fuel related i hate this ****in car

 

you might wanna try and find a mechanic that has some time working on a LT1. but if he can;t figure the system out with diagrams he's not much of a mechanic.

here. print this off and give it to him so he acuaulay has something to go by.

http://mainstreamtopics.com/forum/in...p?showtopic=78


tell him to cover the basics and start at the top... it starts with fuel and goes to IGN from there. have him get it to where it;s not starting and work through it

 

You did say you used thinner gaskets on your heads? If so, then yeah, that will raise compression. You also said that you have 5 month old gas? I would drain that out and put some nice fresh stuff in there, also a new fuel filter. Make sure its getting good gas and then look at how it acts.

 

Have you checked fuel pressure?

Ran it out of gas lately?

Could be the fuel pump.

 

Im saying Opti spark. U should never reuse any part of the opti. It should be a complete set.

Why do they say fuel? Just spray some of that STP ignition starting spray into the intake and if it starts up and runs then dies when u stop spraying then its the fuel. Fuels pretty easy to isolate.. check it with a fuel pressure gauge and watch that it holds constant. You have 8 injectors and its very unlikely that all crapped out at the same time.. damn near impossible.

raising the compression to 11.0:1 by using a thinner head gasket will actually give the head to piston a better "quench" So fuel should burn more efficiently. The head gasket thing will not keep your car from starting...