Has anyone had this problem? This is the third time this has happened to me. I go to pass a car and the car just dies. I pull the distributor apart to find little pieces of my rotor. I don't understand why though. The first time I just replaced the cap and rotor and then read that it would go again, so the second time i replaced the whole distributor. Again this happens. It's a stock 96 Formula.

Thanks,
Aron

 

Not uncommon if you have an aftermarket cam with too long of a dowel pin, but on a stock engine, I don't know why you would have repeated rotor explosions.

 

My friend is in the middle of replacing his second rotor on his opti also. First one lasted about 100 miles, the second one lasted about 2k miles. He is re-checking the dowel pin length tonight. I'll keep ya posted if you want.

Here is the link to my friends post on the Corvette board: http://forums.corvetteforum.com/zerothread?id=836625

Mike

 

It doesn't make sense to me either. It's stock as far as I know, I bought it used almost three years ago. The first rotor was fine for a long while. The second was only a few thousand miles, and this one was maybe a thousand miles. It's really bugging the **** out of me, cause my dad now insists that I sell the car. It seems strange to me that it happened the same way each time, especially considering the first time it was fine through 11 passes at the track and lasted another 15 to 20 thousand miles after when it went while I was passing a car. I wondered if maybe it was going too far past the rev limit but I don't think a few hundred RPM's would cause it to just explode. The only problem I have had with the car is the cats being clogged but I don't see that causing rotor malfunction. I also cruise around with my system pulling the electrical but can't see that causing it either. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Aron

 

One other thing I just remembered, check that the opti vacuum harness is installed properly. Both hoses must be routed correctly and the small, blue valves must be on the hoses. Too much vacuum applied to the opti will cause the insides to deform and cause the rotor or other moving parts to interfere with each other. The result is busted up innards.

 

Thanks shoebox, but I thought of that last time and replaced the vacuum harness thinking maybe pieces from the first one had clogged it up. So I'm pretty sure that isn't it, but thanks for the help. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. By the way, how could I tell if it has a different cam than the stock one? I doubt that it does but it probably doesn't hurt to try.

Thanks,
Aron

 

i would disconnect the vacuum hoses altogether and run it like that for awhile.
just unhook them at the motor, and leave connected at the opti. plug the now exposed and open ports where you pulled the hoses off. tie wrap the opti vacuum hoses to keep them from falling into the serpentine belt or whatever.
jeremy

 

Just a question, but what would that do exactly. I know it would kill all vacuum to the opti, but that would let it suck stuff in wouldn't it? It might be worth a try but I'm curious if it would hurt anything.

Thanks,
Aron

 

i ran my vented opti for several months just capped off. no vacuum lines run to it at all.
lots of time spent at 6500.
jeremy

 

Did you have problems with your rotor previous to this?

Thanks,
Aron

 

no, but i did the vented opti swap on my '93, and i did not have the factory vacuum lines for it. i remembered reading about a guy that hooked up the vacuum to the wrong source, and when turning ~6500+ the opti would go kablooey. it was sucking the cap down far enough to come in contact with the rotor.
knowing this, and having never had a problem with my non-vented opti, i essentially made my vented opti non-vented.

*i had to have a vented opti to run my cloyes timing chain.
jeremy