Hey All,

I got a call from my wife while I was at work telling me her car had died on the street. It's a '99 Durango SLT 4X4 5.9L Auto. She said the engine would turn over but would not start. Because I was at work, she ended up calling AAA to have it towed back to the house. The TT driver was convinced she was out of gas even though the gage showed 3/4 of a tank. He put 2 gallons in it and tried to start it. Big surprise, it didn't start. Then they thought it was the fuel pump (even though you could hear it prime), so they tried to beat on the tank to free it up. Guess what, didn't start.

So, by the time I get home I'm thinking crank position sensor. I plugged in my scanner, no code. Turned the key on and heard the pump prime, so I checked the test port, had fuel pressure. So, just for the fun of it I turned the key and it started immediately. I drove it for a few miles and got it up to temp, ran fine.

My question is, where do I look for what might have gone wrong? I have checked the CPS, seems like it's in place and good, fuel pump sounds OK and all underhood connections are tight.

Any ideas?

TIA

 

UPDATE:

Well, it happened again, I was at least home this time. The vehicle won't start, and displays "No Bus" in the odometer display. Does this mean the PCM's gone?

 

no bus could be a bad pcm, or a bad connection between the gauge cluster and the pcm, i believe the connector is in one of the corners on the far left side of the cluster (top or bottom obviously) try pushing there to see if it gets rid of the message.

 

UPDATE II:

Well, I found a bunch of posts about this "No Bus" thing. I went back to where the truck was after about an hour. It started right up. I pulled the battery connectors, cleaned and greased them and reset the PCM. Truck fired up and ran like a champ.

I'm thinking this may be one of those battery issues, and am of the mind that rather than just charging the battery I'm going to replace it (after I run through the fuses and relays).

Any other ideas? At this time I'm just worried about it stranding my wife again. Is it possible my alternator is not juicing the battery up enough? The truck does sit for days at a time sometimes, and if the is battery is borderline..............

 

99 PCMs overheat and die.

Bad or old battery not withstanding... go ahead and eBay a PCM replacement.

IndyDurango

 

Maybe I should have mentioned that the PCM was replaced once already back in February by the PO.

If it was the PCM, would it keep coming back? I don't know for a fact that the battery is bad, but the posts I read that had the same issues seemed to revolve around the battery not having enough power to run the PCM.

 

If it was replaced just 6 months ago, the connection is the likely culprit.

Clean with contact cleaner and reconnect very firmly. Watch for issues.

If you do get another No Bus and it isn't wiring, in a sealed bag, cover the PCM with ice and watch it magically work again. Then replace it.

IndyD

 

10-4 Indy, thanks. I'll give it a shot.

 

its basically a computer thats overheating and has no way of cooling off so it goes caput... putting the ice on there works like heat sink on your cpu thus cooling it enough to work... at least thats my understanding. im sure someone will correct me if im wrong :P sounds like you might have fixed your problem and hopefully you dont need another new pcm

 

I hope so!!! I'm going to change the battery (it's 4 years old), clean off the PCM connections and run through the relays in the power center just to make sure.