I have a 2001 Dodge Dakota sport with a 3.9 6cylinder engine. I have aftermarket air intake and that's the only thing non-stock part involved with the engine. There is something wrong with it's accelerating abilities. When you give it gas it just doesn't want to take off. Sometimes it will stall when it is in reverse and you're going slow. I have no clue what could be wrong. Whenever I'm going up a hill I literally have to mash the petal to keep my speed up. Could this be a problem with the throttle system? Please help I'm desperate to try anything. It will also idle high then idle real low when trying to go slow around 5 mph. If you need more info just reply. Thanks.

 

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

 

Welcome to the forum, there are some good people here who can help you out..

First things first, how many miles on the truck? Did this acceleration problem just sort of happen all of a sudden or has it been a gradual problem that got worse over a period of time? And do you have any trouble codes stored in the PCM? On a 2001 you can retrieve any stored trouble codes by turning the ignition key from off to run, off to run again, then off to run and leave it in the run position. Any codes you have will display in the odometer window. If you have multiple codes they will display in order and then it will say "P Done" after the last code.

Let us know what you have and we will try to help from there.

Jimmy

 

I dont have an answer to this but I've had the same stupid problem with my 98 for bout month, My truck will display 2 codes on my tech schools Solus scan tool Po351 bad ignition coil and something involving a short in my fan clutch.. Same EXACT problems as TannerZ's truck, mine will even cut out and die with cruise set going 70+ mph on the interstate.
Hope someone can help us both out!

 

you have a bad coil, that's why it's shutting off randomly. Not sure about fan clutch, they're not electric?

Crank position sensor can cause stalling in reverse. Don't ask how, but it does. At idle, the engine turns too slowly, and a damaged CPS can also cause a shutdown then.

 

I appreciate your help Magnethead, I forgot to mention im not sure if its the coil this time, i am on my third ignition coil, this last one i purchased i got it from rock auto connot be more than a few weeks old. any other ideas? any way to positively test this??

 

If the coil is new, check your dizzy cap. My coil wire came completely apart on the dizzy cap last year and it wouldn't even try to run.

 

Have you preformed a tune up on it?

Have you checked the cap and rotor checked the sparkplug wires and the plugs?

If you are burning up coils I suspect a bad cap and rotor or wires like magnethead is suggesting

 

addendum:

Coils are rated for a specific voltage This is their max voltage. A coil will only generate the electrical charge required to jump the gap of the cap/rotor and the spark plug gap, combined. As these gaps get bigger with age, the coils will start generating a voltage above their design threshold, and they can start to overheat. This overheating causes the epoxy insulation coating of the windings to break down. This causes the resistance of the coil to go down, coils of wire get shorted and jumped, electrical output goes down as input current goes up (remember, V=IR, R goes down and V stays constant, I goes up), and eventually the coil can be called officially dead.

 

Also if all your sparkplugs are way maxed out in gap that's the same thing your coil will be working very hard to make a spark with the very wide sparkplug gaps