Fired up the Dodge for the first time in about a week, and the CE light came on right away. Seemed to idle a bit rough and calm itself. I used it to move a VW in the yard and then I parked it. I connected the Scanner and pull a P300 - no other codes. An Internet search yielded several possible problems with a P300, ranging from bad PCMs, misrouted plug wires, fouled plugs, blown head gaskets, bad injectors, etc.

My first thoughts are to pull the plugs and check for both carbon build-up as well as coolant leaking (note I have not yet solved the problem with the truck overheating) and then check compression on all 8 cylinders. I can double check the routing of all plug wires since I had recently replaced the intake gasket, but I'm a bit doubtful anything was knocked out of whack there as I had driven the truck for a week after the replacement was done and there didn't seem to be any problems.

Are there any other ideas/suggestions?

 

I like the new avatar. What plugs are you running? I was running the Autolite 3923's and got periodic misfire codes ( mostly cylinder 1,2,3...etc.,and an occasional random ). I was also getting a stumble upon hard acceleration from time to time. This occured mostly when the engine was still cold, but did happen sometimes after it waswarmed upI switched to the NGK 2262 plugs, and , so far, it seems to have solved all of the above problems.

 

'first time in about a week'. you might want to just drive it some and let it warm up good, and then clear the codes. could be just some condensation in gas, rusty plugs, etc from not running. especially since the ce came on right away while it was running rough.

 

I think I have the Autolites. The weather here in Oklahoma has not been co-operating of late. It rains, stops, rains, stops, rains (repeat). My garage is taken up by too much junk and I have a ton of homework for class (I work full time and go to evening classes). Hopefully I can get to it either later this week or by next weekend. I will keep your suggestion in mind.

 

when i had that problem with my 1500 i took off the distributor cap and the rotor was bad, the metal contact piece was hanging in there barely making contact, so i bought a new rotor and problem fixed
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I did a complete rebuilt last summer and with all new parts I would be hesitant to believe that the rotor is bad; however, I will file that bit of information for later reference.

 

yeah when i did a tune up, (cap, rotor, wires) everything was good for a couple days then the truck started misfiring and running bad, i got the p300 code too so thats when i checked it, i had the luck of buying a defective part, but i bought a new one and its been running good ever since
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