Hi everybody. I'm new to this forum, new to the Dodge world, new owner of an old truck. I just bought a '98 Ram 1500. I was raised on Fords, but I really like this truck. I bought it cheap, thinking I would only have to do a little work to get it road worthy, but I've already run into a problem I need help with:
The noise from the engine compartment sounds like the belt or a pulley is going out, but not while in park. I noticed that the crankshaft pulley SEEMS to move forward a bit (1/4 inch?) when shifting from park to neutral. That's when the noise begins. At speeds above 40 it goes away if I am still pressing on the gas, but as soon as I let off, it comes back. When I shift back to park, it slowly goes away and purrs like a kitten. I replaced the idler pulley, and the belt seems to be pretty new. Today I'm gonna clean all the other pulleys and see if that does anything. I should mention that the noise was not that bad until I sprayed on some belt dressing.
Can someone PLEASE tell me I'm NOT about to lose my crankshaft??

 

I had the same problem on mine. I found out the hard way as well to never use belt dressing on a serpentine belt, it's good for the old v-belts but too sticky for the serpentines. Get you a can of sylicone spray at the parts store and it should go away. Also i would get some brake cleaner and get as much of the belt dressing of as you can.

 

Sorry, get *** much of the pullys as you can, not the belt. You may even want to get a new belt if you really soaked it good.

 

Check the belt tensioner spring, remove the belt from the tensioner pulley and make sure the arm travels to it's full extent.

 

Thanks for the help...
I cleaned everything and it seemed to be a little better, but still too bad. After checking all the pulleys, it finally turned out to be the belt. The old one looked fine, but I guess it wasn't. New belt, no squeal.
Now if I can figure out why the gas gauge suddenly drops to empty, then back to a true reading, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats....

 

gas gauge problem is probably the sending unit, which is buried in the tank, and intergrated with the fuel pump. not very easy or cheap to fix.

try this, with the tank down sort of low about 1/4-1/2, put in one or two bottles of chevron techron concentrated fuel treatment. sometimes it cleans up the sending unit.