I have looked for hours for the est connector on my car and cannot find it. I even took all of the harnesses apart from the passenger fender to the back of the motor and no connector. There is a tan wire with a black tracer in one of the harnesses but it with acouple of other wires plug into the transmission. Is it a possibility that my 87 formula might be an early enough model that it might be the older style where you have to unplug the 4 wire connector on the back of the distributor? I did this and the car barely idles. Also, the only 1 wire connector (has an orange wire) that I can find under the hood rides along the passenger frame rail and actually is connected to the battery terminal cable. Is this it? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks, Bret

 

Your 87 LG4 does not have a single wire EST cable as described in some manuals ! Your EST connector is located on the backside of the distributor / ignition module (it is a 4 wire pigtail next to the pigtail with the the pink/white wires).


Just disconnect it and adjust the timing to 0 degree. Thereafter reconnect it, erase the ECM-SES failure code by disconnecting the battery for something about 30 seconds.

Thereafter - if you wish - you may observe an EST timing of approx 20 degrees (BTDC) according to the engine rpm. That would be normal, so don´t worry about this.


The tan/blk wire you have seen (together with a purple and a light blue wire) in the harness down to the white pigtail at the tranny is the TCC (torque converter clutch).

P.

 

Thank you Patrick! Finally there is some sense now to what I was trying to figure out. Since I cant see the timing mark at all with the f wire connector unplugged, I know that my car is waaay out of time hence the car running absolute crap. Thanks again so much patrick, Bret

 

Large cap distributor, coil-in-distributor - flat 4-wire connector.

Small cap distributor, divorced coil - single wire connector.

'87 came from the factory with the latter.