My '96 1500 has 108K miles on it. Been maintained well. Had several CELs at end of last year and my mechanic friend replaced distributor cap, rotor, spark wires, and plugs in January. Gas mileage and power wasn't great and in April he serviced the transmission, flushing the torque convertor, welded five leaks in the exhaust system, and removed the cat element from the Y pipe. Truck ran fine, mileage and power was up. Recently the engine began to die as I approached a stop. As RPM dropped to 500 to 750 the engine would die. It would immediately restart. The engine was fully warm, having driven 15 or 20 miles on country roads or the Interstate. Then two days ago this occured again and when I got on the highway at about 55 MPH the engine seemed to stop for a second. Not slow down, just "bump" and then run on. Happened twice in a mile. When I approached our street and the RPM dropped, the engine did not die.

I know nothing about injectors but I tune vintage motorcycles. If this was one of our road race bikes I would be looking at the ignition system, not the carburetion. If this was a fuel supply problem (bad fuel pump) wouldn't the engine slow down, not just bump? I need to figure this out because this is our bike transporter. Any advice would be appreciated. BTW, you may have seen my radiator question of a couple of days ago. That's fixed, and the truck sat and idled for 15 minutes a couple of times flushing the cooling system and it gave no problems.

 

did you pull any code's?my guess is either the crank sensor or the cam sensor is actuating up..

 

Thanx for the reply. Since I did not get any CEL I did not think to check the computer. I am guessing that is what you mean when you asked if I "pulled any codes"? (Told ya' I was a vintage guy....) Do you think one of the local part's houses testers would work or do I need to go to the dealer?

 

I would lean towards the sensors as well. A local parts shop should be able to pull codes for you. Or you can take it to a respected mechanic and get a real diagnostic run on it to see if those sensors are stable. Since he replaced the cap it could be the sensor there. I'm also surprised you aren't having issues without the cat and o2 sensors but, I don't think that's the issue for what you describe.