Alright so i bought a 1988 3.0 3vze 4runner about a month ago for $650 with 249,800 miles on it, ran when i got it, but rough. Had little power, throttle was extremely slow to respond, etc. Figured i'd end up doing a rebuild and hope for the best in an attempt to avoid a swap. Anyways, drove it round the field for week or two while i worked on getting rid of some rust and patching up some fenders, and the other day when i moved it into the yard it stalled and wouldn't start back up again. It sputtered for a couple seconds and died when i tried starting it, and the more times i tried, the less time it ran for, until it finally would just crank and not fire at all.
Since then, my buddy and i have checked for spark in all the plugs and from the cap, as well as fuel. It has good spark to all plugs and fuel is definitely in the rail, but we have a hunch it could be a problem with the injectors/ECU. Reason being it runs when we spray ether into the intake, but not otherwise. The check engine light is on, and when we bridged the diagnostics, at first it flashed at us giving the codes 12, 14, 22, and 24. However, now, when bridged it just flashes repeatedly, pretty quickly, with no code.
We got it to run for 10-15 seconds when we pumped the pedal pretty fast, but you could hear it missing on a couple of the cylinders.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, starting to get really frustrated.

 

Um, vacuum lines are a fairly easy thing to check. Otherwise, I'd say you have your work cut out for you with all those codes. How's the cooling? These things tend to blow head gaskets. I found about two inches of green stuff in my number six cylinder (nearest the driver), which of course made it run like crap.

 

Cooling far as i can tell is fine, no links anywhere and since i can get it to run on the ether just fine, pretty sure it hasn't leaked into the cylinder. Anybody know the symptoms of a failing/broken ECU? could that be an issue? that was one thing in common with 3/4 of the codes, then again, the ECU having issues is included in 90% of all the codes....

 

I don't know how to check the ECU, besides following the steps in the FSM, probably by checking ohms at the connections. You probably checked the fuses, right? I know to check fuel injector function you hold a long screw drive to the injector with the handle to your ear. You could try this while it's cranking. I don't think the ECU's tend to go bad, and like you said, they are easy to blame. I'm guessing a sensor or bad connection is not telling the injectors to click; maybe double check that the engine has a good ground by running a multitester from the block to ground and checking continuity. That last one is a long shot.