so my dad has a 97 dodge dakota 4x4 v6 that he goofed up and hooked up the battery backwards on..He managed to start the truck before he caught it shut it down and was stuck in limp mode when he restarted it after fixing the cables...bought a used ecm for it and the truck starts and runs fine now but the trans is now acting goofy has no reverse and tries to drive while in park...got a new ecm from oreillys and it does the same thing....any suggestions gauges and tac no longer work either. Says he swapped all the relays out and checked all his fuses i'll be heading there (kansas city ks area if anyone wants to know) for the weekend and plan to take a look at but am unsure where to start.

And just for the sake of asking he has a 95 dodge also with the guts from a 2000 that has a issue with the alarm not shutting off if anyone has a suggestion on that one also

 

I will move this to the 2nd Generation Dakota Sub-Forum.

 

You probably messed up a lot of wires. If you wanna go through the hassle, pull ur dash apart and check all of the wires(check the big thick black main leads first) that go into your engine bay. Make sure no wires are melted together and you're getting a short.

 

I honestly dont know how he managed to start the truck if it was on backwards. I did that on our 78 cj and melted all the wires going to the solenoid. If he did manage to start the truck and it was that was for a couple of min you are prob looking at a bunch of messed up components. Did you try a new bat? The old one is for sure junk!

 

to recover the battery. use a good charger, low amp. but use some heavy duty resistors , and caps VERY big caps. dont let the current start out above .1 amp for a long time.

 

as far as i know there was no smoke from wires melting but i wasn't there when it happened so its hard to say. He also says as soon as he fired it up he realized what happened and yanked him off I guess it was my brother that actually did it when they swapped batteries for something and he started it up with out looking at it. He got rid of the computers he got for it to replace the old on before i got there so i really to get a chance to check it out. Like i said with a new comp it fires up idles and revs fine but the trans has gone wonky. Only has forward gears and tries to drive in park and some other goofyness is what he told me.

 

Prob fried the tcu as well

 

I don't see how he could start it connected backwards.

The gauges are a computer themselves, you'll probably need a new cluster.

Get it scanned for codes. That will help identify what's not working.

 

it is my understanding the tcu is contained inside the ecm on this year truck thats why we tried more then 1 replacement ecm and it did the same thing on each one.


As far as getting it scanned i told him that was probably his best option cause he probably fried something else i don't know if he will do it however he was talking about just scrapping it and starting over so i dunno.

 

Were do you live? Ill buy it for scrap price!