Thought it might be interesting to tear apart some dead sensors I have since I've put more than one optispark sensor in the grave and I've never seen anybody take one apart before. This latest one was just driving me insane since it was a brand new, albeit chinese, sensor. It seemed to randomly work and not work, no in between. Turns out there was a good reason for that...



I barely nudged this wire, it was totally disconnected from it's solder blob. Chinese manufacturing at it's best. Soldered it back on and she fired right up. Have to get it all back together now to be sure that it runs consistently but it really looks like this has been the source of all my issues.

For the sake of science and anyone interested my dad and I also ripped the last sensor my car ate (a Mitsubishi sensor I got out of a junkyard car). Here's the pictures.

Mitsu sensor:

The best picture I took of the top. These are the infrared emitters. Those are crimps, no solder joints there and some sort of hardish silicon holding the actual LEDs in.



This is the PCB that's on the bottom of the sensor, the receiver part of the optical section is directly underneath this board. It's also interesting to note that this is a ceramic PCB instead of the typical fiberglass that's used.



This is how we know it's ceramic...



Underneath that PCB. That is the high res receiver that we pulled out.



The Chinese sensor:

Actual hand soldered joints on the emitters. No fancy crimping here... but hey, it works. Sorta.



The PCB on the Chinese sensor before I nudged the wire that feeds 12v.





Hopefully this will finally solve my sensor issues and I can get on with building my coil controller

 

Very interesting, getting ready to do cap and rotor on am OEM unit, so this is good info.

 

Interesting..

 

If anyone has one of the new delco units they didn't mind popping the cover off of it'd be really interesting to know if they are still building these ceramic boards or if they are have all gone the way of the cheap sensors and it's all the same.

I found another one of my dead sensors, definitely two cold solder joints here.
I get the feeling that the bad rep on most cheap optis is just bad quality control and stuff like this that's easy to fix.

 

Man this info is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

 

Good information and thx for sharing. Curious is there any advantage to a ceramic circuit board? Im running the AC delco now and its been good for last 2 years. Glad im running ver 2 now as they are much more reasonable than ver 1 optis as summit had great pricing when i bought mine last time. But i have both the ver 1 and ver 2 optis from replacements that i can look into. To bad we cant source the Mitsubishi sensors.

 

I would guess they were trying to make it reliable. Ceramic doesn't shrink and expand with temperature like other stuff does. Don't know if it would really help though, it probably stays pretty cool with the fresh air being pulled through the vacuum lines.

The electronics work fine in the Chinese part... when they work. Should be just as good as a Mitsubishi sensor. Makes me wonder if somebody built a billet case for the electronics and made sure the solder joints were 100% if it wouldn't last longer than a Mitsubishi sensor. A well grounded aluminum case would practically eliminate any chance of the high voltage reaching the inside of the sensor. Not to mention I'd much rather buy a polished aluminum optispark sensor... even if I know I'll never see it

Do you mean that you have AC delco replacements that you could open? Cause it'd be interesting to see the inside of the v2 sensor they are still making. I'm just not curious enough to buy a $400ish opti.

 

Thanks for sharing, Cool info

 

cool stuff, never seen the inside of the sensor before.

 

Our opti woes are over lol!!!!

 

Those areas that look like cold solder joints are usually temp related fatigue fractures. That would show up in a HALT if they ever did one during development.

 

That chinese board looks like it's been soldered by hand, and the terminal contact solder joints look like crap. No wonder they fail.

 

Do you mean that you have AC delco replacements that you could open? Cause it'd be interesting to see the inside of the v2 sensor they are still making. I'm just not curious enough to buy a $400ish opti.


I dont think either are AC Delco as they would have been returned for exchange. Im pretty sure the ver 1 is a Cardone rebuild from O'Reillys (back when they were Krangen auto parts). Cant recall what the ver 2 was.

Sorry.

 

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I don't know, I've hand soldered quite a few boards for work and these sure look like they were cold from the beginning. Possibly just captured good enough to work for awhile until they worked loose. I don't get the feeling they did a whole lot of pre-testing here, especially when you consider how much effort they put into quality control...

Yup. Although I'm pretty sure the terminal contacts are steel which makes them really painful to solder to, that's probably the main reason they look so bad. Good thing is, they are easy to pop the covers off of and inspect/re-solder.

The covers were almost completely unsealed too, I imagine they let any moisture right into the case. Sealing them up should help a lot as well.

 

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I've kept quiet all I can, Cardo you sir need professional help! I am a retired master auto tech and havent seen you supply one piece of truthful useful knowledge yet, but you tout yourself as an automotive GOD and you are nothing but a troublemaker, I vote the moderators ban your stupid *** permanently! and I havent followed you from anywhere. except to the user control panel to make sure I never have to read another stupid post by you.

rant over.

 

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There's obviously a lot here I don't want to know about. But seriously? C'mon guys, it's the internet. If you don't ignore the people who obviously insult you and give everyone else the benefit of the doubt you're going to have a bad time.

In other (on topic) news, my car is running beautifully after I fixed that solder joint. Moral of the story, chinese optisparks might actually be useful, the sensors appear to be adequately designed for the job, the build quality is just lame. Buy yourself a soldering iron, touch up the connections and RTV the sensor case back together to keep the moisture out and see how it works. It'll be interesting to see how long this lasts, especially now that my vent harness isn't completely plugged anymore...