Hello, I have a 98 Dakota with the 5.2 magnum. Have had a somewhat odd issue with it the past couple of days and thought I’d post here to see if someone could lend some expertise on how to proceed.
it started maybe 1 month ago when I had a cylinder 1 misfire throw the check engine light. The misfire wasn’t noticeable and I barely drove the truck so didn’t do anything for a bit. I ended up needing to drive it a week or so later and then had the check engine light come back on, this time with cylinders 1 and 5 misfires. At that point I figured it was time to do something, and since it wasn’t just one cylinder I figured it would be weird for it to be spark plugs so I checked the distributor cap and noticed it had a tad bit of grime on the terminals on the cap. So I cleaned it off, popped it back on, started it, and couldn’t hear a misfire, so I left it. Took it for a drive today and figured out it definitely wasn’t fixed. It started and idled/ran just fine til I got to a stop light. At that point pulling away from the stop light it lost a ton of power and also I was hearing it stumble a ton, and could also hear a twanging/rattling coming from what sounded like the transmission area, did NOT sound like it was coming from the engine. Checked the codes, it now has a misfire in 1,5, and 6.

anyone have advice on what to start replacing/checking?
thanks in advance,
Jeff

 

Start with plugs/wires/cap/rotor. See if that changes anything. If it starts and runs good when cold, but starts screwing up a couple minutes later, unplug the front O2 sensor, and see if that solves it.