Ok, I'm new here and new to the Dodge brand. I was mostly Chevy. I just purchased a 95 Ram 2500 4x4 with a 360, has new spark plugs, wires , cap. What I am getting is i can start it up cold and it will idle fine for a bit until it starts to warm up. Now I don't see it getting very warm as my heat doesn't get very hot. Once warmed up.. it idles rough , around 500 rpm up and down. When i'm driving it it drives fine except if I kick it down, it starts to pop and sputter and doesn't do much of anything until i let off the gas some. At idle in drive it seems like it wants to stall and when i give it gas to go, it will sputter for a few and then take off and be fine.
Now the person i bought it from said he had done some work to the distributor .. something about a bolt he had to tap out so the cap would stay on (he said it used to get moisture in it).. didn't really understand him. If it's out of time.. wouldn't it back fire all the time and not run ? How can i adjust the distributor timing..? does it turn to the right to retard the timing or advance ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

I my be way off, and others will correct me when Im wrong lol but it sounds kinda like a issue I had. Try unplugging the pre o2 sensor and see if it runs any better. Its worth a try compared to messing with the distributor right off the bat

 

bare with me here.. Ive had jeeps and chevys.. lol.. pre 02 sensor.. from what i have been looking at.. there seem to be 1 on each manifold and 2 on the exhaust ?
pre as in before the cat..?

 

yes before the cats

 

yes before

 

ok , will check that.. see if that helps.. will repost after I check it out.
thanks

 

ok, so the O2 sensor being unplugged didn't work.. drove it 30 miles into work and stalled twice after sitting in drive and trying to take off.. when the engine is cold.. runs fine, once it warms up... gets erratic idle in park and in drive, i try to take off and it sputters and i can hear it crap out (air threw the air cleaner). If i hold my foot on the gas at about 1000 rpm and hold the brake in drive, i can take off better.. once it craps out and dies.. i have to put it in neutral, hold the pedal to the floor, crank it until it starts up and clears itself out , will idle fine for about 10 sec then start to idle erratic again... I ran new high octane gas in it and put a can of seafoam in the gas tank to see if that would help yesterday. I am hoping i didn't buy a lemon... could it be bad fuel injectors ?? sensor ?? sounds like it's flooding itself out...

and by the way the 02 sensor put up the check engine light which i never had before.

 

It wont be a lemon, you simply need to figure out exactly what's wrong. The sputtering sounds almost like backfiring in the intake which would be caused by a lean fuel mixture or too advanced of ignition timing. I was a Chevy guy myself. I know the OBD1 SBC had a timing port that when you unplug it, it would put the ignition system into timing mode leaving the ignition at its base timing regardless of engine speed so you could use a timing light to properly set the base timing. If you try to drive it like this without plugging the port back in, it behaves similar to how describe your truck to drive. I don't know if an OBD1 Dodge uses the same concept. If so, it may be something to look at. Hopefully someone here can shed more light on that.

 

Check fuel pressure before you go any further. To me this sounds like fuel starvation.

 

yeah, i need to figure something out.. it's getting annoying.. odd how when it's cold it will run fine... but when it warms up it starts acting crazy.. do you adjust timing on these like the older trucks/cars by the distributor ? turning counterclockwise or clockwise ? like I said, the previous owner did something with the distributor and he said he had it in time but thought it might be to far retarded
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