Spark plug wires and a little help - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

decoro · 10-09-2005, 10:21 PM

Hi new to the area here...

I have a 98 Tacoma ext cab 4x4 - The truck has the original spark plug wires - I think??

They wires have printed on them some Japanese somthing like samoto and 1997 on them...

How often should I change my spark plug wires - not sure???

My Tacoma has been idleling rough latley, regardless of weather.

I changed my spark plugs last year - so its been a year - rouglhy 16k miles...

Any help would be greatly appreciated....

87yotaGOD · 10-09-2005, 10:34 PM

I was in the same boat with my 87 pickup. I didn't change mine since it was purchased! So 127k miles later it started to idle like crap, regardless of weather like you said, and new plug wires helped alot. I figure new wires every 50k miles might be in order, but Im not sure.

nikita · 10-10-2005, 11:04 AM

The older Toyota OE wires were not very good. On my '84 they only lasted about 30,000 miles. The wires in a '98 SHOULD be much better. If you have a volt-ohm meter, test each wire for resistance. That is how I isolated the bad wires. There should be something like 2000-3000 ohms per foot of length.

My new Tundra has direct iginition and iridium plugs. Goodbye tune-ups!

87yotaGOD · 10-10-2005, 03:42 PM

Heh, the way i figured out my wires were bad was when I opened the hood and night and could SEE the sparks traveling down the wires, and coming off the wires onto metal parts in the engine compartment.

decoro · 10-15-2005, 11:53 PM

I found out - that it was indeed the spark plug wires... I had the originals in there for over 125k -

The wires had the year stamped 1997 on them and each wire had 1 - 2 -3 -4 printed on them - never changed -

Truck runs alot better now - Which is great - Idle is perfect and smooth...

Thanks for the input

90yotapickup · 02-17-2007, 12:18 AM

yes i just did a good ignition system tune up on my 90 pickup with original wires in it for over 133,000 miles i noticed it was running funny so i checked under my hood at night and all four of the wires were arcing sparks to one another so i got a new wire set, distributor cap, rotor and some sweet spark plugs. it runs perfect now