I'm not yet officially a Dodge owner, but am very near. I went to test drive a 2001 Dakota today and it's pretty nice. I was able to make to buy it until the buyer told me it has very very bad gas mileage and he dont know what it is. The check engine light is on...He say it may be the fuel system.

He told me, it's a 20 gallon tanks and with a full tanks he'll get 180 miles, that's 9 mpg. Wowowowow.. That stopped me from making the deal, although this guy is truly upfront and honest...I truly wanted help him get rid of his car, if it's not too much to fix it, I'll buy it from this guy...

My question for you Dodge veterans, what exactly is the problem that it's eating up so much fuel, and how much does it cost to fix? From my experience with imports such as BMW, Benz, Lexus and Rover, normally it's just the fuel pump, spark plugs, injectors and wires...but never does one gone this bad...9 miles per gallon of gas???

 

Could be any number of reasons why the CEL is on. You can turn the ignition key to "ON/RUN" and then back to "OFF" 3 times, and on the third time leave it in "ON/RUN" and the trouble codes from the PCM will display in the odometer. After the last code displays it will read "P DONE". Then you can post here and you can check the FAQ section at the top of the second gen page here and get a list of codes so you can find out what each code means. That will give you a lot better idea of what is wrong with the truck.

Jimmy

 

if you have a smart phone there is a app that you can type in a trouble code and search it to find out what it is but the mpg sounds right for mine when i had bigger tires on it if you got bigger tires its with drop your mpgs quick

 

could be an o2 censor

 

You know the Check Engine lamp could be anything in the world.My Check Engine lamp was on and the code was P0440 which is a Evap code,loose fuel cap,vent valve cleared the code and all is good.BUT the fuel mileage is not going to be much better that what you had figured.My 2003 Quadcab,4X4,with a 4.7,automatic trans and 3.55 gears gets around 12 to 15 in town and about 17 to 19 on the highway running about 75.I know that fuel prices really do SUCK but if you are buying a truck or a SUV you should not really worry about what the gas mileage is.Most people have a smaller car to do most of the intown stuff and the Dakota is for nice evening mainstreet cruising and doing some hauling