Ok guys I need some help. I was taking my daughter to school Thursday morning as usaul, went about 1 mile & it started to run rough, came to a stop sign & it almost died. So I turned around & headed for home to avoid a tow bill, it had very little power on the way home & up a hill.

Sitting in front of my house now it will idle but seems to have alot of unburned fuel out of the pipe & seems to be running on 4 cylinders.

Here is what I have done/checked:

Fuel pressure is at 50 psi

I lined up the timing marks to TDC at the balancer & the dist rotor seems to line up with the mark in the dist, as far as I can see with a mirror & flashlight.

I replaced the TPS just because it comes up so much here on the forum & I have not replaced it yet.

A couple months ago I did the Hughes plenum plate & at that time I replaced the plugs, wires, dist cap & rotor as well as the o2 sensors.

I am 38 & started wreching on Dodges when I was 16 but this is my first one with EFI so I need some of your combined wisdom to help me with my problem. I used to be "73scoutII" on here but changed when I got the .net address for fun.

My first thought was timing chain because I am at 153k miles but when I have lost timing chains in the past on 318/360 engines they just died but I considered that it could have slipped a tooth & I do not know if the newer ones use the same dumb nylon coated cam sprocket as they used to use.

Anyway the truck is a 1998 4x4 1500 5.9 automatic & any help you fine people could provide would be much appreciated.

My next step will be a compression test.

 

Oh yeah I did get some codes for multiple cylinders missing after the drive home but not since eventhough it is still running the same.

 

have you got the digital odometer that will show codes using the on-off-on-off-on key seq ?
might want to pull the plugs and look at them to see if you can pin down a cylinder.
my first guesses -
overly rich mix = leaking/stuck injector. bad pre-cat 02 causing richness.
not firing = plug wires off, cracked cap, rotor, water/moisture, coil, plugs, wire cross fire/short
other = water in gas
idle only problem = iac
other sensors = tps, crank pos, cam pos, map, intake air temp.
won't rev up - cat.

 

I have a cheap code checker & I also have the Hypertech programmer which I believe pulls codes as well.

Cap, rotor, wires & O2 sensors have about 3000 miles on them & I ran it last night in the dark moving the wires around checking for spark leak but saw nothing.

I am going to pull the plugs & do a compression test on all cylinders, hopefully I will find which cylinders are wet & will swap those injectors to other cylinders. Or is there a better way to check injectors for leaking?

 

Nope. AndDodge wasn't the only one to use them, and all manufacturers figured out they're a bad idea.

You're going to have to do some more testing and give us more info before ai can offer any good suggestions. The compression test is definitely a good place to start. I always like to eliminate mechanical problems first when dealing with mystery misfires.

 

Well I found the problem :-(



Along with a bent push rod & a bent valve. I guess at 150k miles it would be best to just get a crate motor than to do the top end. This is not what I wanted to find!

 

Well it goes under the wrench on Tuesday, I don't have a hoist anymore or the time so a shop near me is going to do the motor & take it my old machine shop.

Does anyone have a spec list on what I can get away with as far as internalupgrades that I can do without pissing off the computer, like a cam # or slightly taller pistons? The truck ran nice before this but a little more power would be nice & it still needs to pass Calif emissions.

I am running 285 tires & have factory 3.92 gears so it is not bad but I live in the mountains so if it not coasting down hill it is climbing them.

 

Well I got my truck back today & all is well $4186 was the final bill which included some extra stuff so I am back in my ram!!!!!!