I'm new here and need help.....
 

Hello all. I'm hoping someone can help me with my 97 trans am. I bought this car about 2 Mos. Ago and it intermittently won't start and has become more frequent. To the point of concern. This is a manual car with 135k on the clock. After the no start with long cranking I can still get it started if I keep trying and trying. After finally getting it started the tachometer will be dead for a few mins and occasionally run rough after. I have codes p0336 and p0372. It has backfired once after starting it and sometimes it will feel a little sluggish. But most times it would start up and run pretty decent.... sometimes it just won't start and I deal with the tach for a few mins when it finally does. Am I dealing with a bad opti? I replaced the crankshaft position sensor and the pigtail harness along with it because at first p0336 was my only code now I also have the p0372. Any help is very much appreciated. I just dropped it at meineke today 😳 😅
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/ls1tech...f6a3526850.jpg
These are the codes i pulled

Did you get the car back yet ? What was the cause ? You replaced the crank shaft position sensor and the pigtail harness but still got the high res code ? sometimes that can be fixed by making sure the plug to the opti is clean but its typically an opti issue. Its hard to diagnose the optispark when its still half running, kinda have to go down the list but when its dead its pretty easy. Start the car and if you arent getting any injector pusle width, looking at what ever live data program youre using, then it the opti. Just something ive noticed when having to replace mine.

Its recommended you put lock tight on the two screws that are inside the optispark, those will sometimes wiggle out and short out or cause misfires in the optispark. Because your year of firebirds has a crank position sensor, you can get the car to run just off of that. There are also kits out there to delete the optispark and convert to a 24x cam and crank signal.

I am running a torqhead 24x signal kit, was all plug and play.

Well turned out they said it was the opti distributor. They said that the timing cover gasket was leaking as well as the water pump. I guess the opti was getting oil on it or the connector. So turns out they are are replacing the timing cover gasket, the water pump and opti. 2k for the whole job smh

Yeaaaaa thatll do it. Atleast youre all good and set now.

OP, if you are going to own one of these old cars I’d suggest you start getting familiar with doing jobs like this yourself. Plenty of info here and on cz28.com to get a job like this done and save you thousands of dollars especially in the long run.

Yea the amount spent is pretty excessive smh. I'm stillÿ waiting on the car as well. Apparently they ordered the wrong opti so I'm still waiting on the car, which is super sad because I've been without my car fir a week now. I'm excited to see how it runs and see if it runs better now with the repairs. Is there a chance that it will run better? It had some delay when punching it but ran decent when it did run after no start l.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/ls1tech...9d3131fa5f.jpg
This is my 97 TA
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/ls1tech...4e7a97c4a3.jpg
This is my 97 TA

Also an update. The opti that was brought to the shop was reman and he refused it and is waiting on one a1 Cardone from Cincinnati. I'm hoping this is a good opti. I've heard some optis are basically bad from the supplier.

Opti's are basically all reman now and subject to out of the box or early failure (sorry, that's just the way it is). Best current bet seems to be from Petris.

Dang I sure hope mine is good. My mechanic told me flat out he won't do the job again. Smh like wtf. He s making good money to do the job.

If I still had an opti and was paying someone to do the work for me, I'd do petris.

If I'm doing it myself, I'd get a local one with a lifetime warranty.

I would encourage you to learn about and start working on your own car. :) You will go broke otherwise with a car this old.

I plan on working on it myself from now on