I kind of stumbled into this while working on my Toyota Supra and thought I
would pass this along. I am not sure this is a valid method to test the wires
but helped my in my case.
The car was running very sluggish just out of no where. I ran the computer
codes and it pointed to a possible vacuum leak or ECU failure. So I replaced
all the vacuum hoses and the code went away, but the car continued to run bad.
I replaced the ECU ($35 off of ebay so worth a try) and the problem was the
same. It basically sounded like a cylinder or two was not firing. Since the
timing light uses the number 1 wire to set the timing and run the light I
thought I would just connect it to the other wires and see if the light would
work. I worked my way through each wire starting at one since this car is a
straight 6. The strobe light pattern was consistent on all until I connected
the five wire. The light would work randomly and sometimes not at all. When I
connected to the six wire the pattern was consistent again. Then went back to
five again and the random patttern would occur again. I replaced the five wire
and the car was running like new. Since I had purchased a new distributor and
wire set, I went ahead and installed those. This was an easy test to go
through the wires and see the culprit.
If this is not a good test let me know. Maybe it was just coincidence that I
found the bad wire.
Greg 0036
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