Ok so I'm new to 1st Gen daks. Mines a 93, 4x4 auto, with a 5.2. believe it or not I just bought it out of a field for 500 bucks. It's in ok shape. So the guy I bought it from had parked it due to a bad brake line. He started it every 2 weeks for about 6 months. He went about 2 months without starting it and went to start it again and nothing. So I know the ign coil is bad, no biggie got another, still wouldn't start. So I'm looking on the forums and see the whole spliced wires thing. I slice open my crusty harness and the splice is good, 3 wires into 1, all good. Read someone said there's supposed to be 4 wires but I didn't find a loose 4th wire anywhere, checked all the relays and, etc, all good. Terminals have power under the relays. Still no fuel pump coming on, still no spark. So I go to check my codes. No check engine light. Bulbs still good. Also pulled my crank position sensor, whole end of it was caked with grease. Cleaned it, checked it with multi meter, it's still good. Put it back in the truck still no dice. Any ideas

 

you say "I splice into my crusty harness"..... I would continue checking that out...... being from a field you mightfind some chewed off connectors.

 

Crusty was in reference too the mud and dried up tape that Dodge had it wrapped with. Inside the harness was surprisingly clean. All the wires are still pretty flexible not stiff. Nothing's chewed up. It looks pretty good

 

See if the pcm is turning on the asd relay. It needs to be on to get power to the coil and fuel pump.

 

I can hear the relays clicking. Or at least a relay clicking. I've got no check engine light tho which makes me wonder if the pcm is any good, the bulb is good. I'm gonna go ahead and run up to the parts store and grab some wire and replace the links where they're soldered. Im waiting for a new ignition coil, cap n rotor, plugs wires and a new coil pickup to get here before I'll know for sure.

 

Oh and here's another one for you, the buzzer that comes on when you turn the key on. It'll come on for a sec then dies out like it's losing power, but if I pull the ignition fuse under the hood then plug it back in the buzzer comes back on and stays on like it's supposed to

 

I'm half tempted to bypass the asd relay and just hook everything up to toggle switches, will that work? Idk, I'm gonna go redo that splice then wait for the rest of parts to get here. I've got a backup computer that I can use if mines no good.

 

no DON'T bypass the asd relay and go to toggle switches.... more trouble than it is worth

 

Started pulling out both engine harnesses last night. I'm going to completely removed them. Fix every splice wether it's bad or not, replace any damaged wires and connectors. Every ground will be replaced, soldered and heat shrinked. Then I'll rewrap both harneses and add so.e sort of bracing in locations where there is a splice so that they won't flex or move. I'm ordering replacement distributor, coil, plugs, wires, crank sensor, and battery cables. I know the wiring on these Dakota's is an issue so I'm just going to go all out on the harness so I never have to worry about it again. It'll be solid, reliable, and you can be damn sure that it'll be weather proof once I'm done

 

Got both the pdc and pcm harnesses removed last night. Unwrapped them cleaned them and started marking all of the splice locations. Found around 20 splices in total, 6 of which were bad. 1 goes to the ac, another to headlights, found one that was for ground that was toast. In the process of fixing them and re wrapping the harness now. Decided to pull the cover off the computer. So there's 2 silver fuses/relays on the board that are visible through the gel. One of them had shorted and popped hard enough that it pushed it a good ways out of the gel. So the pcm is toast. Gonna pull the one off my parts truck and hope it's not bad. If it is bad I'm just gonna order the Mopar performance pcm. We'll see what happens. Any recommendations on other areas I should check out before I put the truck on the road? Other than all of the ignition parts which I'm going to replace anyway.