One of the joys of being mechanically inclined is being a hot rodder.
My beloved Biscayne SS is not a Biscayne at all.
She started out in March of 1990 as a Caprice Classic with a 170 hp 305 cubic inch LO3 small block V-8. In a 3,995 lb. car, that's not much motor. Especially since it was a TIRED engine, probably barely made 130 at the end.
Because I am a rodder, I yanked that engine and replaced it with a 350 cubic inch LT1 out of a '96 Impala SS. 290 horses, 330 foot pounds! No loss in mileage. Win win?
No.
The dark side of hot rodding is mutant engine swaps. When something goes wrong, you own it. It's not something you can take to someone because they don't know what you did and there's no book explaining it.
I tried to document it all, but there's huge gaps for another mechanic to figure out.
Well, she's been dead for a few months because I am past the limit of my knowledge. It started as an occasional miss or sputter. It seemed fuel related because she sits so much gas going bad seemed a possibility. I think, now, it's the distributor.
On an 92-97 LT1, that's called an Optispark™. The opti is the source of much angst in the Chevy world. It's mounted low on the front of the motor above the crank and behind and below the waterpump. It's driven directly by the front face of the camshaft. And they die. They're supposed to be good for 100k miles, but sometimes barely last for 15,000. When they die they don't give a code to the computer to help you diagnose the problem. Your car just starts acting funny, or dies.
It's easy to blame an opti for a fuel problem. It's easy to blame a fuel problem on an opti.
You don't really know which until you've pulled things apart and swapped in new pieces.
Did I mention that a new AC-Delco® Optispark™ is a $350+ part? You can buy a cap and rotor, but that never seems to fix it.
Thankfully I have great friends and one of them took pity on the poor Biscuit and bought me a new opti. THANKS MARV!
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Convert it to DIS. I've seen kits that use the Opti as the trigger, using junkyard LS coil packs. Or, while you are at the junkyard, just get a truck 6.0. Should have the crank spacer already on it for the 700r4.
ReplyDeleteI converted to the 4L60E with the LT1.
ReplyDeleteConverting to a Delteq which is a waste spark system using the coils and spark management from a Northstar engine. $795 for the complete kit and almost the same if I supply my own coils and module.
LTCC is the LS1 coil conversion. $409 for the box and wiring and I am on my own for the coils, plug wires and mounting brackets.
Both of them require a healthy Optispark™ for the optical section, so what I am about to do is not a wasted effort. The problem is I didn't have the $350 for the opti, let alone for an opti-delete kit.
And honestly, as the LS conversions become better understood and known, they are getting cheaper. The 5.3L truck engines have a wider torque band and run almost the same HP and Torque as the LT1. I've heard tell of them for less than $1,000 with computer and trans. THAT'S the Optispark™ delete I want to do. The LS3 in the Vette is just too damn good mannered to ever want to deal with the LT architecture seriously.