Hi everyone.
I purchased this 04 Dakota off of a car lot about 5 years or so ago when they were going under. The owner was almost impossible to catch at the yard, but I finally cornered him long enough to make an offer, and wound up with this beautiful Dakota for 2 Grand, amongst listening him complain about how his mechanic had taken it out on the river bottoms drinking, and blew up the motor, and how he would never get his investment back, blah blah blah!!

So, I had it towed to the house, and contacted a friend who owns a local garage, and he found me a low milage 4.7L motor from a smashed Dakota in a salvage yard, and in a couple of weeks, and 25 hundred dollars later, I had a great truck. I never had any problems out of the truck until about a couple of months ago. I don't drive it much, and it sat so long the battery died. I replaced the battery, and ever since then, the keyfob does not work, and the doors don't lock when you reach 15 MPH. All door locks and windows work from the door buttons, but no keyfob activity at all.
I was told by a shop that it needs to be taken to the dealership and the computer " reset " , which I find a bit hard to believe. And their service charge is unreal!!

I have tried disconnecting the battery, and waiting a few minutes, but it did not help. the truck has 170,528 miles on it, and was well maintained by the previous owner. The car lot dealer bought it at an auction, and it was a good truck till his mechanic " borrowed " it!!
I thought the computer reset issues did not start until around the year 2007, But I could be mistaken.


any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
.......................jb

 

I *think* you need to have one programmed by someone with the right equipment, and once you have one, you can program others.... I am not certain of that though, so, take it with a grain of salt. The dealer, or a well-equipped locksmith should be able to program the first one for ya. Then there is a procedure in the owners manual to program more....

 

Door lock 15mph function is a customer modifiable parameter, the procedure is in the book to turn the function on/off. I would try that and see if it could be programmed, if not it might be a security module issue. Maybe the CTM? I think the dakotas still used that module even though the full size trucks evolved to the PDM system

 

So an 04 will have a Central Timer Module in the driver footwell, behind the panel behind the parking brake pedal.

That CTM is basically Dodge's early version of a Body Controller. It handles all the locks, windows, lights, and Remote Keyless Entry.

More than likely, that specific module may need to be reset. A full system reset is by unhooking the battery, shorting the 2 cables together, turning on the key all the way to start, then letting it sit in "on/run" for about 15 seconds, then key off, leave sitting for 20-30 minutes, and reconnect battery. This bleeds all surface charges from power circuits, capacitors, etc and drains all the modules down to a brand-new state....if you can use that word on a 20 year old truck. A module reset is a little harder - I need to consult the manual for a 100% description, but you need to pull the fuse going to the CTM and then actuate the window and lock switches to bleed all residual power out.

The problem with these trucks is that the dealers don't have the equipment to work on them anymore. Most of the DRB3's are gone now. I actually need to change my signature because my DRB3 died a couple months ago - still powers on, but keeps thinking it has the wrong cable attached so I cant get module comms out of it. A Snap-On Modus can get close - still not as many uses as the DRB3, but enough to do most of what you might need to do. But that's your best bet, to reset the CTM and/or system, and then try to break into it with a high-end scanner.