My 88 dodge ram is dieing. Yesterday I took my dodge on the hwy for the first time and at first it seemed nomorl on power but the futher I drove it the wamer the engine got never getting hot but close and fuel mileage went from 8-9 miles to the gallon to useing a half a tank in 70 miles. The truck would not even pull itshelf up a slight grade. I'm not sure but I think grandma beat me riding a turtal. Please help. The truck is an 88 4x4 318 auto with 31" tries.

thanks

 

So many things to check...

Consuming that much gas would lead me to believe that your fuel injector is stuck wide open or some such thing. But along those lines it'd also be a good idea to inspect the O2 sensor and probably replace it.

Getting low on power as it warms up might be a coil problem, but if it's dumping way too much fuel it'll be running super rich and not making much power, so I'd look into fuel injector first.

 

I thougt about the injectors and will inspect them and o2s. This might help some more, I have put true duels from manifolds back, opened the breather up, put electric fans on, disabled the smog pump, and a trany cooler on. The duels is the only thing done before this, every thing else is being done right now to see what happens. Any more thoughts will be looked into.

thanks

 

When you say "opened the breather up" what do you mean?

You need to keep one valve cover plumbed into the intake otherwise you run a good chance of forcing oil up and out the breather.

 

Injector....not injectorS...you only have one. It's in your throttle body.

I am also curious as to what you meant by "opened the breather up" [&:]

 

I could not find a breather that fits the in place of the old one so I cut around the out side of the breather to make a top and bottom only no sides. There is a hose still going from one valve cover to the in take. And this truck does have 2 injectors. I am getting ready to test drive it now and see if any of my changes have helped.

I will let yall know what happens.

 

Well I just test drove the truck and it done ok untill the last 2 miles then it acted as if I cut its ***** off. It fell on its nose littlerly. I thought I was going to have to get my budys ford and toe it home. I will check the injectors tomorrow and the timing. If anybody can tell me what the timing runs best at I will try that. It is set at 8 dergrees now. any other help would be nice.

thanks