Hey Guys looking for some advice, the other morning jumped in the truck it started but sounded extremely rough. When giving it gas started popping and backfiring then died. After that it would only turnover and not start. thinking it wasn't firing did full tune up still no fire . Pulled a plug had it still connected to the plug wire , turned it over and still no spark. Any advice would be great. It's a 97 Dakota with manual 4 cylinder

 

You said no spark, but did you have correct fuel pressure? Do you have any check engine light codes?

I will move this to the 2nd generation Dakota sub-forum.

 

Have you checked your ignition coil? Maybe your timing is off.


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Only things I know that would cause no spark for the 2.5 engine is

1 Bad coil

2 Bad coil to cap wire

3 Bad Distributor Ignition Pickup

4 Bad Crankshaft Position sensor

5 A wire came off the coil or Distributor Ignition Pickup

6 This one I’m not sure of but I had a guy say there was a fuse to the coil I have never seen this mystery fuse but check all the fuses in the cab and in the engine bay the PDC it’s the box next to the battery pop it open and look.

 

Replaced the ignition coil today still no spark and changed out the auto shut off relay still no spark , would there still be no spark if the crankshaft sensor was bad? Gonna try to get my Buddy to run a diagnostic check other than that I'm baffled.

 

Maybe its a ground problem check your ground cables to the engine block did you look at the other stuff?

Pull the codes

Do you maybe have a security system shutting it down I have seen this happen before an unknown security system is up under the dash and you didnt know it was there.

 

A quick and dirty way to check the crank sensor is to watch the tach and see if it shows RPM while you're cranking. If it does, the crank sensor is putting out a signal.