Hey all....I know this is all going to be a little vague but bear with me.....more info to come. Sorry about the book..........

Over the past week i have working on the ram. Went out and bought a replacement intake so i could modify the intake, prep it and get it all set up for the swap. So i did the modifications on the intake, put on the hughes plate, put all new sensors and thermostat in the intake and jumped in. Disassembly went fine except for the distributor. One of the cap bolts on the passenger side broke off on the distributor so i had to pull the distributor out of the motor. After messing with trying to drill out the old bolt to reuse the distributor I just decided to pay to put a whole new distributor in along with the new cap and rotor I already purchased. I lined the dist. shaft up and reinstalled it, found TDC, made sure the rotor was pointing to number 1, re ran the spark plug wires, etc. Reinstalled the new intake along with a 180* thermostat from hughes. Buttoned everything up and reconnected all 8000 connections, topped her off with coolant and fired it up......but it wouldnt run. After i realized i was a dumba** and fixed the fact i had the wires running counter clockwise instead of clockwise ( yeah i was tired) the truck fired right up and ran great. I let it idle for about 20 minutes and checked my oil pressure and engine temps to make sure the were all good and checked to make sure nothing was leaking. No leaks, no loss of oil pressure, no weird noises and no overheating, i figured it was safe to drive it home. So i left the garage i was working in and got about two miles down the road and all of the sudden my oil pressure dropped to 0. So i pulled over, the oil pressure shot back up to 40 psi so i let it idle just to make sure it was ok and it stayed right at 40. I pulled out and drove another mile and it quickly dropped back down to zero then shot right back up to 40 in less than a second. I got a little worried about it so i pulled over and shut it down to look under the hood. Looked around under the hood and there were no leaks, no weird smells and everything looked fine except for on the driver side on the valve cover the breather was disconnected. After trying to reconnect it, i found it was actually broken. So used some handy electrical tape to tape it up real quick and jumped back in. The truck would not start now. It cranks just fine but doenst sputter or even sound like it wants to start. The CEL is now illuminated and i had to push it to a parking lot and leave it there for the night because i had no light or tools to try and troubleshoot. I know this is a very vague description and could be hundred of different things, but i just wanted to know if anyone has run into a similar problem with their trucks after doing the plenum fix/kegger mod. Oh and i did check the distributor to see if it had wiggled loose or if the wires had come loose and they are all on tight.

On one side note, the only difference between my intake and the new one i rebuilt were the vacuum ports. Instead of two on the driver side, there were two on the passenger side and one on the driver side. The one on the driver side was for the brake booster, on on the passenger side was for some connection on the Throttle body (sorry not sure what that does) and the other one was for connected to the breather on the valve cover on the driver side. On the old intake there was a small hose running to the driver side valve cover, so on the new intake i just cut a new hose and ran it from the driver side valve cover to the passenger side vacuum port. Was i wrong in assuming that this would be the same? Did i buy the wrong intake and just not notice it? HELP! (Sorry long day and just frustrated over all of this)

Any help would be much appreciated and when i wake up tomorrow ill be able to get a better look at it and hopefully borrow a scanner to see what it says. Thanks in advance.

 

After reading this and noting that you have a tenancy to mess up or over look you connections/work, just go over it and make sure it's buttoned up tight. BTW, in no way do I mean that in a bad or disrespectful way. We all, at one point or another when working on our rigs, tend to work until exhaustion sets in, and that's when accidents happen. Look everything over and get back to us. It has to be something simple. Also, check the codes. They'll point you in the right direction.

 

If you have spark and the correct fuel pressure, the cat might be clogged.

 

Find out what you are missing. Spark, fuel, both?

 

Ok so i went to the parking lot where the truck died and popped the hood, no leaks everything looks correct. Hopped in and started it up and it fired right up. Heard what sounded like a vacuum leak from under the hood so i shut it down and noticed th PVC on the drivers side valve was dangling and the spring valve was just kind of losely floating around in the bottom part of the valve. I kinda rigged it back together and started it again and it fired right up and sounded great and ram smooth. Then mother nature decided to step in and proceeded to dump a monsoons worth of rain so i shut the truck down and locked it up.

So the update is
SPARK: YES
FUEL: YES
PCV: VERY BROKEN (will replace this afternoon)

 

Get the PCV valve from the dealership.

 

Ok ill bite.....why only from the dealership (besides the obvious)

 

Others (aftermarket) appear to allow the wrong airflow. Also, the intake I bought had the vacuum ports as you described. No problem.

But!!!! PCV is on passenger side. Hose on driver's side goes to air filter housing. There is no valve in it. There is a plastic elbow that fits down throught he rubber grommet in the valve cover. Check valve on one side only.....

 

Dodge has used both sides of the motor for the pcv valve location, I am not sure what year they switched over to the drivers side. PVC is a glue for pipes, pcv = positive crankcase ventilation.

 

After doing the same work i had almist the same issue. would start cild. die. not restart until it cooled.down. no oil issues though. i actually broke off a temp sensor on the front of the intake. also doublecheck connection to sensor on back of throttle.body. mine was loose and caused issues