My name is Phil, I have a 2005 Dakota, this problem has been going on about 3 months.
I is not Temperature based.
I have replaced the Crank,camshaftand Temperature sensors.
The truck is hard starting AT TIMES, it would crank over and not start, I smelled like GAS.
I would let it set for about 5 to 10 mins, retry it and some times it would start. Finally it would start.
Today I went to my mechanic, we were by the truck, and I started it.
It ran as if it was on 4 cylinders. It also had a hard snaping sound, coming from the rear right valve cover.
it started 3 more times with the same results.
on the 4 restart the cam on the right clacked twice, and the engine stopped.
I restarted the engine again, It started normally and ran with out the cracking sound.
Any idea what is going on?
What fires the Plugs? Is there any mechanical distributer involved?

 

No distributor. Plugs all have their own coils. The engines from this era are own to have issues and NEED copper plugs, none of the fancy pants stuff. V6 or V8?

Any codes?

Also, seems odd that you have a noise under the valve cover. Mechanical sound? Not a lifter? If that's the case, you might have an actual mechanical issue in the valvetrain. Personally, I'd check the plugs first, and then take off the valve cover and see what looks like it's been making noise.

 

There were two codes one pointed to a Open injector on #1 the other pointed to the auto shutdown relay.
The autoshut down relay was replaced
we were working on the injector problem when the problem reappeared.

I replaced the plugs with champion copper ones

I had one error saying crank and camshaft were out of sink.
There is 240000 on this truck
I don't want to seem dumb but is all the timing done thru the computer, can you point to information on how it is done.

Thanks Phil