Hello,

First time posting here. I have a 2nd gen dakota (2000 sport, RWD, 3.9V6). I just recently bought it used for light duty truck use. I noticed occasionally it has a problem where when the truck is drive or neutral, I will feel a shake at a routine period (maybe 3 times every 2 seconds). When this happens & I start to drive, the truck will start rolling forward but not entirely engage the gear, causing a massive power lag. As I apply more power it starts to clunk. To me it sounds like it's coming from the passenger side but its' hard to tell if it's from there or dead center. If I really give it some gas it clunks once or twice quickly and then engages.

When I bought the truck, I noticed that the motor mount that has a brace going to the trans bell housing was not connected at the bell housing. I reconnected that & didn't notice the problem for about 50 miles. Now the problem is happening again, occasionally while driving at constant speed I'll also notice the problem of the power cutting. I did a drain & fill and replaced the transmission filter, it was definitely old but no metal flecks, the magnet was covered with gunk, but figured that was normal. I got the pan with a drain plug to make sure I can do it again if I need to. Any ideas? I'm leaning towards some motor mounts needing replaced but that's a guess & I don't want to blindly dump money into this. I also have a code right now for O2 sensors, I will order those later, I don't know if those can be messing with it.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

Motor mounts won't fix a trans problem..... Though changing them certainly won't hurt you. Think I would be more tempted to replace the governor pressure sensor, and solenoid, adjust the bands, and see if that didn't improve its attitude any.

 

I appreciate the input,
Let me at least explain my thought process on why I was leaning towards motor mounts.
I was thinking since the first time that I was able to make the problem go away, it was by reinstalling that bolt to the bellhousing that was originally missing. I thought maybe it was the way that the engine was not properly aligned to the tranny. Also since the problem is foreshadowed by the vibration you can feel in the whole vehicle. I don't completely understand transmissions and how they work yet. Since the problems are only intermittent, do you think that these solutions are still valid? Just want to make sure prior to ordering anything. It only happens about 20% of the time, but when its warm, its much more likely to consistently have the problems that i described.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

It's entirely possible you have more than one problem going on there.

For the O2 sensors, make sure you use NTK, or Denso sensors. Skip bosch, these trucks don't like 'em. If your truck is high mileage, replacing them is a great idea. (over 100K) Might do those first, see if it clears up the O2 codes, and see if the other problems change at all.