I have a 1996 Camaro z28, 6-speed and lately it has been having issues running...

The car will normally start right up and run perfectly and I could drive the car for roughly half a hour and it will run perfectly fine but periodically it will die.

A short story is, today, I left work and made it about two blocks and my car died. I tried starting it for almost a hour and it would not start, just crank.

So then I took a spark plug wire off and put another spark plug in and grounded it to check for spark and the car fired right up.

So then I shut the car off and put the wire back on and drove it about 2-3 miles home from work (with the car running perfectly) and when I made it about a block away from my house, the car died again so I took the spark plug wire off again, to check for spark the same way as before and the car fired right up and made it home and then died right as I pulled up to my house.

Any help or suggestions, please post.

 

If you do a search under OPTI, you will see this has happened to others, its probably a bad Opti Spark Distributer.

 

fuel pump. when the car wont start, listen for the pump to kick on before tring to start the car.

i had the same type of problem, just finnished up the job today

 

Any codes?

 

Sadly, no there are no codes. Otherwise this wouldn't as hard to figure out as it really is.

Also, I do not think it is the opti-spark distributor because I replaced that, along with the cap, rotor, and water pump.

Also, the fuel pump does prime itself when I turn the key to the on position.

My father said that it might be something related to the ignition, like it not being grounded right or something.

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

I do think that it might possibly be the Opti now seeing as it's having some of the same symptoms that my other Opti had.

Only thing is that, this time, it occasionally backfires and the RPMs go to about 500, then 0 then up to a 1,000 and then back down until it finally shuts itself off.

What is also weird about this is that I can fire it right up when it dies (most of the time) but then if I rev it up to 2,500 RPMs, it dies right away.

... Any clue?

 

maybe the ICM... my car had the same problems... it would just crank and crank unless you let it sit for a long time, then it would fire up again, eventually it just crapped out. look into the ICM... maybe the coil wire or something.

 

Could also be a short in the wire going ot the opti (unplug the pigtail on the side of the intake and see if it is coroded)

Check for maybe a short in the ires going to the coil (shakes them a little when the car wont start while some one is craking the engine.

Is that plug wire you where taking off touchiing any other wires, maybe it is "fixing" the short when you are taking it off and moving it around?

 

Well I just replaced the Ignition Control Module no more then two months ago and when I bought this car, apperantly the kid that owned it before me said that he went through 6 or 7 Opti-Sparks before he sold it to me (And he only drove it 5,xxx miles at the most)!

So I bought the car assuming that the water pump was just leaking because if you go through that many Opti-Sparks then it's, obviously, not the Distributor.

Do you think I am just getting bad luck or could it possibly be the Opti's wiring that's making it go bad? Because I have a new ICM, Opti-Spark Distributor, water pump, and a lot more.

Also, when I took off the plug wire, no it was not touching any other wires. I just put in an old spark plug to check for spark.

 

Did you check the opti wire pigtail for corrotion. Maybe it is that wire that is causing the problem, i htink it is a $50 part at the dealer tho.

I had a LT1 that a short in the wireing to the coil, the car would just cut out. Sometimes it would start right back up other it would take a day (or me nudging the wire on accident)