I bought this 95 ram 1500 at the end of june and last week I was towing my charger home from PA to north Jersey. This truck has a 5.9 with 130k on it. I towed it home fine and as i was going to drop off the tow dolly a loud bang came from the engine and repeated banging noise. I opened the hood while the engine was still on(stupid) and the crankshaft pulley was just bouncing up and down rapidly like it was about to fall off. Killed the engine had it towed to my uncles shop and im waiting for when he has time to look at it. Im fearing i somehow broke the crankshaft, perhaps a connecting rod? any clue anyone?

 

welcome to Dodge Forum...

sorry to hear that, and even sadder to say it's probably a busted crank from what you describe. keep us posted on what you find.

 

Hopefully its just a harmonic balancer failure.

 

sorry to here that man, isnt wharton right by rockaway? I live in wyckoff, I guess your the close to me. yet us know what going on with your truck. this is definatly a new one for me.

 

Well the crankshaft did break, right behind the first terminal. Which would explain the crankshaft pulley movement. The good news is I have already purchased a used 01 5.9L from a salvage yard for $600 with 86k on it...pretty damn deal if you ask me. Now i just need to read up on pullin engines outta these trucks...seems like plenty of room to get the job done. So we will see. anyone with some things that i should look out for would be very helpful, if there is anything that could complicate the removal that is...

 

Sorry about the crank. any ideas as to why it broke?

I yanked out a 5.2 out of my old Jeep GC a couple of years back and the biggest problem I had was getting access to the bolts on the top of the bell housing. I found it way easier to just yank the intake manifold and you can get to those bolts real easy. same for the exhaust...

other suggestions would be to strip down the front of both motors enough so that you can stand on the inside of the engine compartment to do some of the work. sounds like extra work but it makes the whole process so much easier. time wise you should be able to yank it in about 3 hours, I base this on having torn my motor down earlier this year to yank the heads... with the fan and shroud already removed, my little woman and I were able to go from a running motor to having the heads sitting on the garage floor in 1 hr 45 minutes. the only things left at that point were the bell housing, starter and motor mounts. all of that couldnt have taken more than 20 or so minutes... btw, this was having her hand me all the tools to limit the hassle of getting in and out of the engine compartment...

if you do yank the intakes, you might consider an aluminum belly pan and get rid of the steel one.
keep us posted...!