Hi everyone. This is my first in what I think will probably be many posts in this forum for my 1991 dodge. I just picked this truck up three weeks ago and have been ironing out bugs in it but one has crept up that I am not so sure how to diagnose. Here is the back story on the truck.

The truck was bought for $600 dollars down the street from me. It has only been driven 3000 miles in the last 10 years according to the title from the former owner. I bought it because it was solid and ran very well...until this past Monday. It would not idle and felt like it was running on 7 cylinders. My first instinct was to pull a wire and check a plug and when I did that the spark plug literally fell apart in my hand. So...I gave it a full tuneup (sparkplugs, wires, rotor, and cap). I thought I had it solved because it fired up and ran beautifully again. I called it a night.

The next day I went out to use it and again I fired it up and it started to run like crap again. So out comes the fuel filter (which I think was probably original) and in goes a new one. And what do you know it runs great again. I take it for a drive to go get something and it dies on me in the road 5 different times. It will not restart immediately but if I wait 15-30 seconds it will fire up again. It must have done this 8 times. What gives.

More back round...I pulled an entire trashbag full of mouse nests out of the heater box so there have been mice. I do not think there are any anymore but I could be wrong.

Basically any ideas as to what this could be would be great.

1991 Dodge d150
318/ 998 auto

 

Have you checked/cleaned the throttle body? May want to do that to make sur no nest is in there and clean it. May want to use Seafoam or something like that in the gasand oil.

 

I had the air cleaner off to do the tune-up and get at the distributor and took a second to look down the throttle body. It was surprisingly clean looking for a truck that did mostly sitting. I think i will use some carb cleaner on it however. I did not however look in the hose leading to the air cleaner. Hmm now you got me thinking a bit more simple than i was thinking. I will pull the whole air cleaner assembly apart. I would not be a bit surprised if i dislodged a mouse nest in the intake ducting.

 

Well I have been narrowing the search down. I found some very hacked up wiring on the drivers side wheel well and fixed it. At first the truck would crank and not start. I discovered I was not getting power to the coil. I did some checking around and a mechanic friend of mine came over to lend a hand. We pulled the fuse box down and looked at fuses and then all of a sudden the truck would start! So...I have a wiring issue somewhere but now I cant get the damn thing to repeat it. Oh and the heater core blew on the test drive. .

On a side note...holy smilies. I've never seen that many on any of my other boards lol.

 

Threw in the towel and am towing it to a repair shop. Everytime i think its fixed it dies in the road on me so its off. We will find out how much this will cost me

 

Cheap fix thankfully. It was the crank position sensor. All is well again.