Company comes out with a great way to get rid of a wear item and provide a much better tuning option?

Good thing we have the asshats at tech to riddle them with insults and tell people to stick with optisparks cause they never ever fail and anyone can tune that PCM perfectly.

Hurray hurray.

 

To suggest (or even hint at) power loss because of an LS1 PCM conversion is ridiculous. One must be uninformed and unfamiliar with the conversion to agree with this thinking.

Maybe we should begin selling optispark conversions for LS1 engines for more horsepower.

 

The MSD Opti doesn't have a good track record. The Delco Opti will support everyting you throw at it. Opti problems are blown out of proportion and are usually user error more than anything. Don't think LS coils can't go bad either.

With that said, i'm planning on 24x down the road just for ease of tuning and that's it.

 

I'm doing the conversion and 24X is the most expensive way to go about it but the best way

 

With 58K mi and owning my 95 Z for only 2 weeks, I am wanting to do the conversion after doing my first plug/wire replacement.

Getting rid of the need to snake the damn wires under the alternator and around the PS pump pulley would be GREAT!

Aside from that, I want to do it so I eliminate the possible issue with the WP leaking on it and leaving me stranded, will allow more people to tune it and the LS1 to have more parameters.

I don't plan to have a radical build, but as a DD I am also weary about a robust and reliable setup. I like he idea of getting the distributor/electrical connections away from the WP.

I went on EFI Connections website and priced things out...about $2K and they said they don't have any LS1 PCM's in stock anyways.

 

Hey S10 when are the new timing covers going to be available?

 

Right on Smitty. I hated running new wires. Here's my setup. Granted I came up with my own style of coil mounting, but, BP & EFIConnection have very easy mounting solutions readily available. These Taylor Wires were about $79 shipped to my door. 10.4mm, 6.5" between boots, 130* on coil and 90* on plug.

 

3D solid model completed last week. Material here. Doing a CNC mill upgrade today. Begin milling LT1 timing covers tomorrow. Run the batch, send out for anodize, wait for return. Let's say early January to be on the safe side. Let's wait until we know all of our costs before advertising a price.

 

jrboyson where did you pick that tc up from? efi stopped selling them I have a 97 so im prolly just gonna keep my timimg cover, the problem im having is finding the coil and brackets at a reasonable price I was thinking about just getting some stock coils and mounting them with some thick sheet metal, my car by no means is stock im putting 400 ish to the ground im doing a 4l80e swap at the moment going from t56, bp auto is building me a harness to work with the 80e so ill just have him make it for the 24x too. and there is a shield made to go under the water pump that protects the opti from any leakage from the water pump,i love the opti but I think its time to "update"

 

If you need a really affordable way to mount the coils you can just go to Home Depot/Lowes and get some threaded rod. I made valve cover studs that I keep my coils on. Pain in the *** time wise when wanting to pull the valve covers, but I have like $15 in my coil mounting method.

 

^what he said. If I was doing it I would think about mounting the coils on the firewall under the cowl then make custom length wires. Or POSSIBLY find a set of wires made for a car that the lengths would work. Keeps coils off the VC's for a cleaner look all while making VC removal easy.

But who keeps needing to remove the VC's that often anyways lol

 

Yea I mounted my coils the cheap way too. There a pain in the *** to remove, luckily efi connections just came out with the coil mounts for round truck coils and I will soon to be going with those.

 

Ive built a few LTx cars and have never had an opti fail on me, even when my waterpump took a crap and leaked all over my opti it dried out and ran great.


But tuning with HP tuners is just so quick and easy and with the turbo setup im building its a much better way to go then aftermarket Ecu or trying to make the LTx ecu work

 

There are so many different benefits to the 24x setup that it would be silly to try to ridicule it. Even though it really shines on a modded vehicle for the extra RPM and easily locatable tuning, even a stock car can make some arguments for the swap for the diagnostic abilities and simple plug wire routing.
You can get them direct from TPiS.

It's one of the last things I need for my motor to be 100% buttoned up, but I am waiting for EFI to get their cover done so I can compare looks/features/cost.

SR cars that want/need to check their lash and spring pressures every ~5,000 miles .

 

Notice nobody argues with you. Those arguing are blindly arguing with me moreso than what I actually say.

I never said an opti can't fail, what I regularly say is that people are stupid and neglect them and then blame "the opti" for a failure that was simply neglect of tuneup items. The wear items cost a lot less over the life of the vehicle than this conversion so the reduction in wear items is a weak excuse, the waterpump, plugs, wires all need changing just as often as the opti so this is just an excuse not much of a legitimate reason to do this swap.
Far as who can tune an LT1, I have been very vocal about people needing to pick genuinely good vendors for all their service needs and very vocal about the fact that reputation is NOT a measure of how good a shop is often it just means they pend more time and money on advertising. People who are good hands on are often not good salesman and good salesman often aren't all that good at hands on work, separate skill sets. Both necessary in the world, people just need to try and figure out which skill set their vendor possesses which in a FEW cases will be both, but relatively few cases.


I didn't say the swap itself was responsible for the MULTIPLE instances of lost power I have seen on this forum, I did say that if people are so incompetent they can't get an opti to work they likely wont get this to work well either. I believe there is where you will find the power losses.
Far as uninformed and unfamiliar are you saying moehorsepower is in that category?

Far as opti conversions for LS1 I plainly stated the LS1 system is technically superior, what I am arguing is the actual practical advantages of the retrofit to an LT1.
Try arguing with what I actually said rather than trying to FABRICATE lies to try and discredit my argument rather than address it head on.

 

I made an aluminum plate that conforms to the hump in the firewall. I mounted the coils to the plate and the plate to the firewall.

Jeff

 

With just this swap? The swap isn't giving you power, but done right, isn't hurting you either.

Mine does idle smoother!

 

Man, Caprice you sure dont like this swap do you? I to took off a perfectly fine Opti for the 24x and was finally able to give my car a good safe tune, which I couldnt get with my LT pcm. I gave my Opti to a buddy who had his go out on him, darn leaking water pumps! Oh well, guess I wont have to worry about that anymore.

 

Please quote exactly where I said I hated it or that it was a bad product.

My "problem" with it is just that it is a bandwagon jumped on much too quickly when there are a lot of other low hanging fruit that would deliver more for people's dollar and many of you have the newbs convinced an LT1 is unmoddable without this.

Far as the leaking waterpump, I would put cash on THOUSANDS of optis having been thrown out when all they needed was to dry.

Far as you guys taking offense to my trying to be the voice of reason why doesn't just one of you address the fact moehorsepower is agreeing with me? Point of that being most of you are blindly arguing with me rather than even objectively reading what I wrote.

If I wanted to take an LT1 over 7000rpm or feed it boost I would look at the 24x setup, since I am not looking to rev an LT1 that high that eliminates the biggest real benefit of the 24x system and if wanting to run boost a 2BAR MAP would be nice without the reduced resolution of the LT1 2 BAR conversion, but again not looking to do that either.

For a normal hydraulic cam NA LT1 I just don't see the benefit. There are plenty of good LT1 tuners out there and the software to tune and datalog a 94-95 LT1 is dirt cheap. If more folks would spend the coin on a datalogger to help their tuner they could better keep tabs on their car and help their tuner.
Then again they need to pick a good tuner, not just the tuner they saw mentioned in some magazine article.

 

Caprice will bash anything that came out after 2005 as unnecessary fandangled tech wizardry.

"Do not want."