3rd & 4th Generation (1992–1996 & 1997–2001)Toyota Camry Discussion for years: 1992-1996 & 1997-2001
Topics of discussion range from fuel economy, safety, modifications, performance all involving America's favorite family car, the Toyota Camry.
my friend blew her 96 camrys engine so we put a 95 engine in and replaced parts as needed... we have everything back inside the car but we cant seem to find the distributor wires for the ecm... we checked all throughout the wiring harness and we cant find it... (wires are yellow, black, blue, and red and are bundled together in a gray shielded cable) anyone have any thoughts or have any idea where else to look other than the main wiring harness bundle?
The distributor plug wires run directly from the distributor to the ECM and are attached to the main harness. Should be attached to the same bundle as the IACV plug.
Hint for engine removal:
Next time you change the engine, pull the harness through the firewall leaving it attached to the engine, having the ECM plugs just sit on top of the engine. Once removed, swap engines, re-attach harnesses and re-install.
we have checked, double checked and triple checked... we have looked inside the glove box where the wires should have originated and we are not 100% certain, but they dont seem to be in there either... we are looking for the 4 wires (red, blue, black, yellow) to be coming from the main bundle, across the engine and out somewhere near the dist cap, but they are no where to be found... they arent with the bundle or anywhere else... we opened up the main bundle in several places to make sure that we hadnt pulled the wires out or anything but we cant find any trace of them... we have the harness from the engine that we put in and we can clearly see them there, but they are not in the bundle that is actually in the car.. does anyone have any idea if maybe we are missing them somewhere? or if certain models of the camry have those 4 wires running from somewhere else? or if it is possible that there could have been some kind of mod done to the engine where they would have run the 4 cables differently? the slots where they are supposed to be behind the glove box have 2 wires that are not the right color in them and 2 of them are empty... again any help that you could give us is much appreciated!
Oh wait a minute.. lol Does this car happen to have Coil Packs on it?
If the 96 originally had coil packs, thats the problem
If the engine that was originally in the car didn't have a distributor, there isnt going to be wiring going to the distributor. On the 96+ Years I believe that they had Coil packs installed instead of using a distributor
nah the origional engine that we had in there had a distributor but it had the coil seperated which we are re wiring it to have the coil actually inside the distributer like the engine that we have in there now had it set up... the origional setup had the distributor on the right side of the engine and it had the coil off on the wall of the car attached to the sheet metal close to the battery and filter... we have it rewired now, but we still dont have the other wires that we need.... i think they give power to the distributor tho i could be wrong... my dad is the wire master... im just the tech guy lol... what we should have is a gray shielded cable that runs thru the main bundle and out the side to plug into the cap... but it isnt there... and we cant find any trace of it throughout the main bundle or any of the sub bundles or all the way back to the firewall.. im really at a loss on this... but i know that something had to have been there cuz until she blew the engine my friends car ran great...
The yellow red black and red wires are for the crankshaft and camshaft correlation to the ECM. The igniter powers the distributor. Has two wires that run to it. The distributor power also powers the injectors. Make sure the distributor has the cam and crank sensors inside it before wiring it to there. Some camrys have external sensors on the timing side.
mmkay so the distributor does have the sensor in it and we have rerouted that set of wires, but there is another set of wires that is supposed to plug in on the other side of the distributor and we do not have the four cables for that one... im really at a complete loss... it should be right there easy to see and find... from looking at the wiring harness that was attached to the car that we salvaged the engine from, the wires should run thru the entire harness over to a split on the right side of the engine where they should be hanging out ready to be plugged in... but the car shows absolutely no sign of ever having those cables... is it possible that this is something that the distributor that is on the "new" engine has that the old engine didnt? we are pretty sure that the "new" engine is actually from a 95 camry and the camry that she has is a 96... i will try to get a picture tomorrow when there is daylight to show exactly what im talking about if that will help...
Sounds like your mixing parts and trying to make things work.
Not quite sure what your trying to accomplish by rewiring the distributor. Can you not use the original distributor (off the blown engine) with the new engine?
Are you using the engine wiring harness from the blown engine or the new engine? To make things easy, I'd use the original wiring harness (off the blown engine) and swap whatever parts you need from it to the new engine.
we are using the wiring harness from the blown engine... and i dont remember why we decided not to use the distributor off the blown engine on the new engine... i know that my dad had some reason or other... but its been about a month since then and i really dont know lol... still clueless as to what happened to my wires tho... apparently those four wires, the red, blue, black, and yellow wires are common throughout the two years of engines we are using and all that... so it should be there... and isnt... again, any ideas would be much appreciated
ok so i dont know how to upload pictures on here... but i will try my best to describe what we are trying to do... it is a four prong four wire connector that runs from the ecm all the way to the distributor and connects to the top of the distributor towards the front side of the car... if that makes any sense to any of you... in the ecm connectors, where the wires should be there are only 3 wires with the 4th port empty... ne+ should be connector number e11-4 (red wire) but there is a white wire with a blue stripe in that connector... for the G+ which is e11-5 (yellow wire) but the wire in its port is green with a blue stripe... for the NE- which is e11-17 (the blue wire) there is a green wire with white stripe in its port... and the G- which is e11-18 (should be the black wire) there is nothing plugged into the port... we are really at a loss with what the heck is going on in there... any help would be awesome! thanks
You should have used the wiring harness from the blown engine to begin with!
I dont know why your rewiring the whole harness. Use the harness that was ORIGINALLY on the car! If you use all of the electronics from the engine that you blew originally, swap them onto the new engine, use the harness from the blown engine on the new engine you shouldnt have a problem. The 95 ECM is OBD1, the 96 is OBD2.
To upload pictures, type [ img ] YOUR IMAGE LOCATION [ / img ] without the spaces
the location is on my phone... i have no websites that i can post them to... but i was just doing some digging... and ok, for clarification we are using the origional harness that was in the car and as far as we can tell was always in the car... but one thing that i just found is that we used to have a sensor on the crankshaft that was for angle and speed... the engine we have now didnt have a space for it so we were gunna re route it to the sensor on the distributor that this car has... only problem with that is the sensor only has 2 wires and we need to fill 4 wires seemingly to make the sensor on the distributor work the way it is supposed to... can that be done? or am i even making sense... i dont really know a whole lot about engines... my dad builds engines for airplanes and has done car engine work before but never on this exact model and never with this many issues... hopefully we can get this figured out soon...
Your 95 distributor should have two plugs, a 2 wire plug that runs from the igniter .. and a 4 wire plug that runs to the ECM (Crank/Cam Pickups). You cannot use the 96 Camry distributor because it doesnt have the CKPS inside of it like the 95 does. You need to get a 92-95 Camry distributor for it to work properly
The only other thing you can do to get it to work is to swap the Oil pump from the blown engine to the 95 engine. The oil pump has the wire for the CKPS on it.
we have the 95 distributor it is on the engine that we put in the car... we are trying to figure out how to run it using the 96 wiring harness that is also in the car... we arent sure what wires we need to have to run the 4 prong connector we know that the connector had a red, blue, black, and yellow set of wires, but our 96 wiring harness doesnt have those wires... we have run the connector that went to the cranks/cam sensor over to the distributor but we arent sure what we should do from there as far as how to get the wires to mate up with the distributor any ideas? thanks
If you have the 95 Harness, cut the Distributor plug off and use that.
Your going to have to go to the ECM and find where the Yellow, Black, Blue, Red wires run out and pull the pins out one at a time. Solder a length of wire on them and run each wire to the corrosponding wire on the distributor. (Yellow to Yellow, Red to Red, etc..)
I'm not sure if your 96 ECM has Red,yellow,blue,black wires though. Let me know if they do or not
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95 Camry
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