Hi guys, Ive got a 2000 dodge dakota, today i was driving on a back road, and hit a pretty decent sized branch on a curve on accident, i went about 2 miles down the road truck started to bog down then died going up a hill. I pulled into a parking lot for about 15 minutes trying to figure it out i had no electrical at all, checked the battery, one of the terminals came off, plugged it in truck finally started but now my radio doesnt work and my gas gauge is on E and wont move, and now the engine idles higher than normal and when i put it in park the rpm flys up the like 5 grand. i took it to my garage they cant look at it till thursday so now im screwed i need to know if theres anything i can do to make sure it wont die on me again so i can get to work and back home i cant afford to lose my job and can barley afford to get it fixed.. any help would be greatly appreciated guys.

 

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

 

The battery terminal came off?

You may have fried your PCM by running on the alternator. It's fairly sensitive to voltage so when the battery came out of the circuit the voltage regulator would have lost a reference.

Do the key trick. Starting key off, turn it to on (not start), then off, on, off, leave it on. You should see codes in your odometer window.

 

I would think if that came off it would have shutdown ASAP on you?

 

If he was lucky it would but as long as he kept the speed up the alternator "should" be able to keep things running.

I know, not safe on a new car - and it wasn't very good on an older car.