Toyota Repair: Missing and Constant Flashing of Check Engine Light, sanity saver, jumper wire

Question
Hi Ted,

I drive a 1995 Toyota Camry LE 4 cylinder with 170K miles. Work done recently on the car includes a new timing belt and water pump installed about 10K miles ago in the summer of 2009 along with a radiator. I also cleaned the EGR valve according to your instructions in June of 2008. EGR has worked great since!

The car had a slight barely detectable miss one could hear at the exhaust tailpipe for the past about 3 years which the garage noted but did not recommend any solutions. The car has run well with no drivability problems and starts well over the past 3 years. With all that history, I will share the problem.

I returned from a 100 mile round trip to home. After unpacking the car I drove 2 miles to the grocery store with the car operating fine. Upon driving the car when I left the grocery store I noticed some hesitation on pulling out along with a single miss or two.

On the 2 mile ride home the miss was occasional but hard. With the car tached to 2K it was not running as fast as it should and the miss made it worse. Then the motor straightened out briefly for less than a minute then back to an occasional hard miss on that one mile trip.

At home I listened to the tailpipe exhaust which had an almost regular putt sound. After a few of the single putts there was a quick double putt occasionally.

When I put a jumper wire on the data link connector terminals E1 and TE1 and turned on the ignition the check engine light flashes continuously instead of giving me a code. Interestingly the OD Off light flashes a code 63 with the OD button turned on as I normally keep overdrive engaged. When I disengage the OD button the OD Off light stops flashing!

I have NEVER seen a check engine light flash like this or the OD Off light flash when in the on position. What is happening, Ted?

Many thanks! You are a life and sanity saver!

Mike

Answer
If the computer doesn't detect a problem the check engine light will flash tweice per second with no numeric pattern, this is normal, the code 63 is for a shift solenoid issue in the transmission but this doesn't cause a misfire, I would clear this and take care of the misfire first. The most common causes for misfires on the engines are the spark plugs and the plug wires, give that a try and clear the o/d code by disconnecting the battery negative terminal.