Jeeze every post, no matter what the problem some one always says Opti, a lot of you guys make it out to be a lot worse than it really is. It just gets really anoying when some one asks a question and every one blames the opti. I have seen a couple posts on the board were people changed opti, plugs, wores and turned out to be some thing like a bad EGR. Every one makes it to be like we have change opti light in our cars, my stock one lasted 10 friggin years before the coolant killed it, Jon94Z has 80K and his car still runs awesome. Some of you haven't had great luck but the minimum they last is a good 50-60K miles. Every time any one talks about LT1s, they mention the damn opti, its gets real anoying. The opti isn't that bad, theres a couple 9 to low 10 second cars still running GM optis. It isn't coil packs, but it isn't crap.

 

I have 60k on my car and i have replaced it twice. and its been the problem both times!

 

100K on mine. Daily driver. Water pump leaked a ton of coolant all over it. Power washed the car. Never even new they were a problem til I got on some message boards.
Never changed/had problems with the opti.

(of course now I will!)

 

I would like to add the vented design seems to have increased reliability quite a bit - most of the posts I see concerning people with bad optis are 93-94. I changed mine as preventative maintenance at 80k after hearing all the horror stories, but I have not had any problems with mine (knock on wood).

Patrick

 

95+ cars seem to have their fair share as well, like Slim had a ton of problems with his on his 97.

 

My Opti was confirmed deceased at 50K miles.... one of the very few failures my car ever had. Rust from a cheap carbon steel bearing retainer plate blinded the optical sensor. Numerous people have documented actual failures due to:

-poor sealing of the harness connector
-failure of cheap bearing
-rust in the optical sensor
-rotor falling off
-excessive carbon tracking
-etc....

These are not imagined problems... all very real. I'd be glad to show you the one that failed on my car. I will agree that many people immediately jump to the conclusion that every miss, stumble or surge is due to the Opti, and a lot of these turn out to be other things like the coil, coil wire, plug wires, corroded connectors, IC module, etc. But that does not excuse a design that has some inherent flaws, and an abnormally high failure rate.

In theory, the OptiSpark design will provide extremely accurate ignition and injector timing. The reduced spark scatter contributes significantly to reduced emissions, and allows more aggressive factory tuning. Unfortunately, the design has a few flaws. GM noticed the problem with corrosion due to generation of ozone by the high voltage discharge, and added the vent system. Why didn't they do a retrofit on the earlier models, given the known flaw? Something to think about.

I'd be curious who is running low 9's on the Opti.. I know George Baxter (9.04 @ 155mph) used the optical sensor from the Opti to provide cam and crank position signals to a MoTeC M48Pro computer, and a MoTeC IEX 8-channel driver to feed 8 LS1 coils in direct fire. I have the same setup, and getting the high voltage function out of the Opti case seems to eliminate a lot of problems. But these cars are not high mileage applications.

It just seems that people shouldn't have to fear a deep puddle or a quick trip through the car wash. Interesting fact - Chrysler/Mitsubishi used the identical concept on a mid-1980's 3.0L V6, but they had the common sense to put their "Opti" on top of the engine like a "normal" distributor, and it never had the poor reputation of the GM unit. If you take your Opti apart, you will find the Mitsubishi triangle logo on the optical module..... .