I have a 1999 Dodge Ram 1500 4wheel drive. I went out to start it and nothing happened, no sound no clicking not a thing. All the lights (inside, headlights, brakes etc) and radio work fine. So I took the battery out and had it tested at the parts store. The battery is almost new and they said it was fine. I hooked the battery up and now when I go to start it I hear it click but wont start. I finally put a Jumper box on it and it will start and run only if I keep the gas on the floor. As soon as I take my foot off it dies. It seems that no matter how long I keep my foot on the floor it dies. Last year it did the same thing and I took it to the shop and had the battery and the cables replaced. It has ran fine until now. Any suggestions???

All the connections are clean and tight.

 

Might be yer starter takin a dump.. Clicky clicky could be the starter solenoid goin nutz.. try beating on the starter a bit see if it helps.. by beating i mean tapping it..

also, Does it make any god offul noises when its running? Maybe the starter isnt dis engaging the fly wheel and its causing the engine to stall?

My wife's car has the similar issue right now. at least with the starting part cept no clicking.. but her starter was replaced twice already ( Mechanics throwing parts at a problem.. go figure) .. well I just ordered an ignition switch for a her car... Hopefully that will fix her car's problem.. Takes her up to 20 tries to start it,, but once starting,, runs fine..

btw.. Im a newbie, so Im just throwing ideas

 

I had a similar issue once, one of the battery posts was loose and broke inside the battery.

 

Possibly an ignition module?

 

Stop guessing and start diagnosing. It takes 3 things for combustion: air, fuel, and spark. Air is seldom the problem here.

First, do you hear the electric fuel pump provide pressure to the rail when you turn the key on? Rotate the key forward to start but don't crank it. Do you hear a whine? That's the fuel pump. Also, there's a Shrader valve on the fuel rail that you can hook a fuel pressure guage to. Anything under 40psi at idle is too low. That's usually a sign of a bad or clogged fuel pump. After that, Check injectors to ensure they aren't clogged. That should do it for the fuel section.

Next, check for spark. This is rather time consuming as many things can be a factor. You can by a spark checker at the local parts store, it looks like a spark plug with a ground attached to it. Check for spark at the coil and down each wire from the distributor, then pull plugs and check for abnormal burn.

If you are getting spark at the coil but not past the ditributor, you just found your problem. If not, you've gotta go backward and start checking lots of stuff, battery, Alternator, (if it's turning over and lighting up then the starter is no longer the problem, but it could be causing the problem initially getting going.) IOD fuse, or fuel system relay crapped out.

Some other things to consider. A bad Crank position sensor can kill an engine. A bad TPS or IAC can also cause the truck to not read the correct throttle position and fuel to air ratio gets thrown off and not allow enough air in at idle and choke the engine off.

Lots to check and I'm not advocating blindly throwing parts at it, but start with one aspect and try to knock out all possibilities there to rule out potential problems before moving on.

 

It does not make sense that it would start with a jumper box and not start without it, if there wasn't a some sort of battery problem. And as far as not staying running after it does start, I think the pcm needs a little time to reset itself and all the sensors.

I had my foglites wired into headlight switch and burned it out. So now I have them seperate and keep forgetting to turn them off! Everytime I charge it and start it up it runs like crap an won't stay running (like you are describing )unless I keep the rpm's up. After 20 minutes or so of driving the pcm resets everything and it starts and runs fine.

 

These trucks don't run well on even a drained battery. If the battery went dead, give a full charge before you start pulling stuff and checking other parts.

What kind of battery you running? I can't say enough good things about the ultima batteries. A red top is usually fine for just about all but the heaviest drawing items.

 

my truck would do the same thing when it was running out of gas. for some reason it would start, but only stay running if i kept my foot on the pedal. i put gas in it and drove it around for awhile and it ran fine.