Taking ya'll back old school.....

You run into problems when the platinum disks fell off the plugs, raising their gap from .050" to more like .070" and having them wear substantially faster. Couple this with crappy factory plug wires and yeah it'll burn things up. Even a conventional distributor would have problems. Throw some new plugs in and set the gap to .035", put on some good wires and the thing should last a lot longer.
Also if the water pump leaked, it'd destroy them. Washing the engine could kill one and the all too common leaking intake gasket would let oil seep into the electronics if ignored.
My 93Z though on the other hand had took 3 optis in less than a year. That was a crappy design! My other 95Z went 62k before I did a motor swap and decided to replace the opti with the new engine but it still worked fine.
The Best V8 Stories One Small Block at Time



