I was driving home tonight in some very heavy rain, going about 30, when I hit a puddle. Very deep and long, the car pretty much slowed to a crawl. I never even saw it coming, but thankfully I was only going 30 and not 50 like everyone else. Anyways, as I pulled into the garage, the Fleetwood was stuttering. I'm assuming the Opti got a little wet. Any idea how long it'll take to dry out? Will it dry out on its own? I'm not in a financial situation to replace it, but I could probably find a cheap one on the Impala SS forums.....

Brian

Wait, so water can get into there easily?

It will dry out. The best way is to drive it dry. Two things will help when you drive: first, the opti has a vaccuum harness connected to pull moisture out, and, second, the heat from the engine will help.

Optis are actually very tough. They can get wet, and once dry, no ill effects will be seen. On my 95 SS, the water pump was leaking on my opti for a year before I replaced the pump. I considered replacing the opti while I was doing the pump (since the water pump has to come off anyways to do the opti), but I decided to save the money and see what would happen. 40 000 miles later, I'm still on the same opti.

Make sure the vent harness is pulling air through the system though. Pull the elbow off the intake boot and put your finger on it for a second or two. Then release - you should hear/feel air going in. The system runs off intake vacuum and sucks air through the opti, through a metered restrictor on the manifold side of the harness. There is also a check valve so air can't go the other way. Seals get tired over time. A brand new opti should pretty much tolerate just about any amount of water, even a direct shot. Problem is, once the misfiring starts, you have to hope you don't end up with carbon tracking inside the cap. Once the spark doesn't follow the conductive ink path, it just gets worse and you're SOL from there. But like Jay said, they tend to self-heal a lot of the time. If you want to accelerate the process, you can pull the two vacuum lines off the bottom of the opti and aim a bunch of WD-40 in there. That should help displace the water that's there.

Sounds good, I'll do that tonight. It ran much better this morning, but I want to make sure I'm water-free.

Brian

Retard Question: What's Opti-Spark?

GM's bright idea for the distributor for the 1992 Corvette. It's cam driven, sits on top of the timing cover in the front of the engine, below the water pump. Inside is a cap and rotor but with a 360 tooth wheel for precise spark control. It's much more accurate than a regular dist (like distributorless), especially for preventing spark scatter under fast engine acceleration which was common with the conventional dist, but still retains the cap and rotor for high tension voltage distribution. Kind of a hack job if you ask me. GM had the technology to go distributorless and in fact much lowlier vehicles already had distributorless by 1992, though they were all 4 or 6 cylinders. There is way too much history to go into here, but this is a good read:

LT-1 Ignition System - Getting to Know the Opti-Spark (http://www.gmhightechperformance.com/tech/0310htp_lt1_ignition_system_understanding_modifyin g/index.html)

It's actually a very good system despite what many say, simply because of the difficulty relative to getting at it compared to typical older distributers.

Case in point, few if any of those can go 100k, 200k, or even 300k+ with no issue (a member here, previously, did just that and never touched his Opti yet despite past 300k).

And they aren't as liquid sensitive as also sometimes said. As with anything, at least if still sealed correctly and with a working vent harness (important part and can extend the Opti life further), it's like most parts, meant to withstand all sorts of dumping on and not bug out. Sometimes it will temporarily glitch, but likely is still fine even afterwards. Older age and not knowing how it's been maintained is often the issue there.

It's actually a very good system despite what many say, simply because of the difficulty relative to getting at it compared to typical older distributers.

Case in point, few if any of those can go 100k, 200k, or even 300k+ with no issue (a member here, previously, did just that and never touched his Opti yet despite past 300k).

And they aren't as liquid sensitive as also sometimes said. As with anything, at least if still sealed correctly and with a working vent harness (important part and can extend the Opti life further), it's like most parts, meant to withstand all sorts of dumping on and not bug out. Sometimes it will temporarily glitch, but likely is still fine even afterwards. Older age and not knowing how it's been maintained is often the issue there.

Depends what you mean by good system. In a vacuum, yes, it works fine and provides precise spark control. In the real world, it's not a good design compared to other ideas. And yes, the difficulty AND expense is largely why the system is maligned. Conventional cap and rotor replacement: $20. Opti-spark cap and rotor replacement: $100-$150. But wait - only those lucky souls living outside the salt belt should even bother with this because the E-bolts (reverse torx) that hold the cap on almost always strip out, requiring replacement of the entire distributor assembly. The absolute cheapest to get a GM one is about $250 and it goes up from there. And you have to pull the water pump AND crank damper to get to it (doing the cap and rotor doesn't really save on this labor, either). And you better replace all the seals and install it correctly, or else you'll be right back in there in a month.

Optispark life is nominally 100k as far as I've seen. 200k is a blessing and 300k is just about impossible. The non-vented systems in the 92-94 Corvette and 93-94 F-body WERE much worse, but venting certainly did not solve all of the problems. Plug wire replacement is ALSO a royal, unreasonable, unacceptable job. Sure if you are good you can get the time "down" to 2.5 hours, but you have to remove such things as the air pump, serpentine idler, alternator...there are alternatives out there now, thankfully. The smart hot rodders among us are actually just saying good bye to the Gen II small block entirely and welcoming Gen III/IV, which brings so many improvements to the table it's not even funny.

There are a couple members in the HERD up here who have the original optispark in their 200K+ mile 9C1s... both my Fleetwoods are running fine with their original optispark (90K & 135K). I do not plan on replacing them till the waterpump goes bad ;)

How many miles do you have on yours 90Brougham350?

I just rolled over to 185,000 this last weekend.

Brian

......and it still goes like stink. :cool2:

185K with the original opti?

Yessir, I don't believe it's ever been replaced. The guy made no mention of it when he sold it to me with all the other things he had done, like tires and brakes and stuff. You'd think he would have said something, but as far as I know, yeah, it's original.

......and it still goes like stink.
LOL, let's just say it's faster than the 90 was.

Brian

I've got a '95 Fleetwood Brougham with the original Opti Spark....just turned 238,000 miles...I've had to do the cap and rotor twice...other than that and a Mallory coil, it's factory GM....used Summit Racing's cap and rotor set both times for the replacement