VWandDodge explained it in the 1st post, it went down hill from there.

 

I actually thought it was fairly interesting and informative.

 

Now, let's talk about R/T heads.....*ducking*

 

OK thanks for answering my question I thought you didn't have to I really don't why that guy told me that.But how in the heck do you get to the distributor cap its so far back there.I know theres 2 screws to unscrew how it looks like a big pain to change.what i was going to do is unscrew the old cap and one by one put all the wires to the new cap then change the rotor then put the new cap back on.looks like it will take me a while since you cant see anything and its way in the back way to go dodge thanks for making it easy grrrrrrrrrrr.

 

I agree....The 5.9 in my Dakota is 100 times easier to work on, and it's a small truck. I HATE working on the Ram...I'm not doing anything till I pull the motor and then I'll do everything.

 

Back when I had a kegger intake I would pull the wires with the cap, bench dress the cap with the new wires, install the new rotor then the cap with the wires. This takes longer to do but it lets you inspect the wires and route them as per the tsb. No fun with a kegg intake.

Edit: Number the wires before you remove them, one end or the other don't matter.

 

I am the owner of the mentioned truck. It is a 2.5L inline 4, with a throttle body fuel system, NOT fuel injected! There are 2 Halls effect sensors inside the distributor.
I placed a "witness mark" on the crank pulley in the approx position indicating #1 cyl. TDC. The distributor body was loosened and rotated, CC/CCW. The "timing" of the spark changed as the distributor was rotated. This I referenced by watching the "timing mark" move. I did notice a slight elevation of the RPM as the distributor was rotated CCW (looking down on the cap) The distributor does have a flat side on the body that originally was aligned with the block, it is now about 3-5 degrees CCW. Test drives don't show any better or worse operation.
So... I don't see how the spark to piston orientation (timing) can be adjusted by the ECM or any other outside component!? The rotor and cap must be in alignment with the #1 cylinder when the coil is discharged to send the spark to #1 cylinder. Continued on next thread (1 of 2)

 

Continuation (2 of 2). Without the proper alignment (timing) of the cap/rotor there would be no spark to the proper plug. I understand that the coil discharge can be controlled by the ECM, yet there still needs to be a physical path for the coil discharge to travel so it has the ability to jump the gap in the respective spark plug. If the distributor was turned sufficiently out of time with the cylinder the coil discharge would travel to the cap and rotor and NOT be aligned with the spark plug wire to fire the plug.

I would like to hear any other thoughts as to this idea. Please remember that this is a 2.5L inline 4 with a TB, not a fuel injected 6 or 8 cylinder. Thanks

 

If your current distributor had a vacuum tube on it, timing can be adjusted by twisting the disty. If its computer controlled multi point fuel injection, then no, it can't.

The question was posed in a 2nd gen ram forum under the assumption the OP was referring to a 2nd gen ram. You'll get better answers in the 1st gen forum.