My '97 has recently began to do the following: It seems to shift into o/d sooner than before if easy on the throttle, and then while continuing to slowly accelerate, the rpm jump up and down quickly about 200 rpm's until I quit accelerating and begin to cruise. Happens worst at about 1500 rpm. By the time I reach 60 mph, the rpm have settled down to around 2000, and all is good.

 

sounds like a bad TPS. the haynes manual has the procedure on how to test it with a multimeter.

what size tires are you running? you should be pulling about 1500-1700 rpm at 60 mph unless you have over sized tires.

 

I have 3.55 gears and the OEM size rubber. You are correct though, it is more like 1700 r's at 60.

So if it is infact a bad TPS, will I cause any other damage running it as is?

 

shouldn't, its just annoying. do you have a multimeter/voltmeter?

i just thought about it for a second. how old are your spark plug wires? i did the wire re-route along with new spark plug wires, and it made my rapid rpm surge while accelerating go away.
my #8 wire had a crack in it and i was getting cross talk with the #6 wire.

here is the re-route i am talking about. http://dodgeram.info/tsb/1998/18-48-98/18-48-98-v8.htm

 

There is also this, https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...ise-speed.html

 

Thanks ZMan, but most of those guys talk about a rpm surge while cruising. Mine is only while under load at low rpm. I should just step on it a little harder and make it downshift, I guess.

The plug wire thing is interesting. I replaced plugs, wires, dist, rotor etc a couple years back and was careful of the routing issue, but recently plugged the plugs for inspection and never-seize so I could have crossed them at that point. Will check that out.

 

if you had a wire crossed you would have reduced power and backfiring.

what i meant by cross talk between the wires is that the spark can jump through the insulation and hit one of the other wires.

 

Yup, that's what I meant too. I removed/installed the plugs one at a time to play it safe. I'll be checking for wire clearances soon.