Got a little list of problems! I've gotta 2001 5.9 ram 4x4 and over the past few weeks or so my mpg's have droped from around 13 to about 10, I've lost a noticible amount of power and I can smell coolant with the heater off! I just replaced the radiator a couple of months ago and can't see any immediate leaks to explain the smell. I'm at a loss, any suggestions of where and what to look for?

Thanks in advance, Shawn

 

Leaking coolant eh? this could be multiple problems.

You could have a severely cracked head in which coolant is entering the combustion chamber. you'll have an odd colored exhaust if that is happening.
you could have a leak in your heater core and that's why you smell coolant. do you also smell it outside of the truck?
you could have a leak in the bypass hose that runs from the block to the water pump which is why you can smell it but not see it.
You could be leaking coolant onto the exhaust manifolds and it vaporizes as soon as it hits the hot iron, makes a smelly steam.

Power loss:
Leaking Plenum gasket, use the search function at top of page, been covered too many times to start a new thread.
Clogged catalytic converter, does the truck rattle when you drive or hit a bump? if you crawl under the truck and bang on the CAT (when it's cold, please!) sometimes you can here a rattle. the accurate way to test is shoot exhaust pipe with infared heat gun, it should be hotter after cat than before. if it's reversed, you have a clogged cat.

 

Oh yeah I almost forgot, it burns oil too!

I checked the cat already and it seams to be fine, the truck does vibrate when under a load or going up hill but I always contributed that to something in the rearend!

 

a leaking plenum burns oil.

 

How difficult is that to fix, could I do it in a weekend?

 

Check the DIY section at the top of the 2nd Gen home page...there is a write up. If you are pretty good at mechanics, you could easily do it in one day.

 

whoa,

first diagnose, then fix. I just told you what it could be, not what it is. Search for plenum here and you'll learn how to check it.

 

Is there any kind of test I can do to try and narrow down the problem at all? Would a compression test help and what should the compression be? It's a bone stock 5.9. I'm not too worried about the coolant cause the heater works just fine, great actually seeing as it's snowing outside right now, and like I said I can't really find any obvious leaks so I might just leave that be unless it gets real bad.

 

So I pulled the throttle body today to clean it out as was suggested by a few members, and I decided to take a look inside the plenum. There didn't seem to be any real noticiable amount of oil pooling inside it. I guess my question is, where would the oil, if there is any, pool up at? Toward the firewall or more towards the front? When I looked in , it just looked a little dirty, like about 130,000 miles of grime built up in it!

 

When is your next oil change? if it comes out light brown then you got a cracked head and coolant is entering your oil.
Also, the coolant will destroy your crank/bearings if you dont fix it soon.

best of luck, keep us posted on what you find...