Hi,

First of all, I'd like to introduce myself here. I'm a newbie here. I'm 28 yrs old living in NorCal. I purchased 98 Dakota 5spd 4cly last year. The truck had 79K miles when I purchased it. It has roughly about 83K miles now.

Last week while I was driving it in the traffic (stop & go), the truck suddenly choked and died. When I started it, it had a very rough idle and wanted to die. When I stepped on the gas, it made a very loud soud and had black smoke from the exhaust pipe. I managed to make it home. The strange thing was there were no code. I did replaced air filter, transmission fluid, sparkplugs, sparkplug wires, oil about 2K miles ago. It sounded more like a tune up problem for me. One things I could think of is that my buddy borrowed my car the week prior and she filled about half of gas tank (it was half full). The problem is I didn't know which gas station did she use.

Any comments/advise will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

im no expert, but it sounds like maybe a fuel or fuel injector problem, could be ignition maybe too...try using a good fuel injector cleaner. you tuned it and all that and there are no codes showing up so i dont know, thats beyond me. sounds like a problem for a repair shop.

 

ring shot from one of your pistons maybe. Especially if it's smoking black.

 

whats ur oil tellin ya, you have a issue BLACK smoke is never a good indication

 

moe in wichita ks
most of the time black smoke means to much gasoline. white or blue means oil burning. could it be that it had deisel fuel was put in? could the computer cause the injecters bo rich?

 

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to check the dipstick tomorrow to see if my piston is shot. Do you think if I bring it to a shop, they would be able to find out the errors since it shows no codes?

 

It could be anything. What is the main color of the smoke? It helps to know. Shop might be able to but I would make sure it's someone you trust.

 

black ie. oil...

 

I spoke with one of my relatives and he suggested me to check the sparkplugs. I checked the sparkplugs and they all were looking like in the pics below. He said if it's smell gasoline, then it's my O2 sensor. If it's oil, then prob the piston/piston ring. It smells gasoline. What do you think?



Please advise. Should I replace my plugs and O2 sensors? Thanks in advance.

 

Sorry, here are the pictures:



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[IMG]local://upfiles/68762/C11AFED650F94CC7A7A7C4C2B8A8AA21.jpg[/IMG]