Ground spark plug to battery?

If I stick a wire in the negative terminal of the battery, then pull a spark plug, can I ground the plug to this wire to see if it sparks? Thus avoiding bad grounds off the engine block? Obviously I would have the wire to the distributor in place.

By the way, anyone know why your not suppose to pull the plug in cyl. 1 and 5 to test in the 258?

 

Just ground it to the block. The block should have the best ground. If you don't get a spark off the block something else is wrong.

 

What about any caked on oil of dirt? Plus you don't have to strain your back bending over if you need to do extensive trouble shooting

 

ground to any metal component of the engine.... if you are making any decent voltage, the arc will find its ground!!

Just grab on to the plug and you will see.... R)

i would worry about electronic devices seeing the spark... if the lowest potential happened to be in one of those.....

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use a spark checker. very cheap, you dont have to remove any plugs, it just goes in between plug and wire, and you can monitor the led light while driving to see if you have a miss fire condition under load.