I have 97 ram 1500 5.2 4x4 with 130000 on it. It was running friday, today I went out to start it and there is power in terms of buzzing sound when turning key and engine and abs light while cranking and headlights and hood light. After turning key for 10 to 30 seconds when I stop I notice a weird sound I think it could be starter kicking back or something don't know for sure. I don't have a scanner and was wondering if anyboday had any clues to what could be the problem.

Thanks again

 

How old is the battery? Clean + and - terminals? Good grounds? More info?

 

I talked to a friend that's had rams for a long time. He said sometimes water gets in the fuel and its a pain to get it started but it should start and to use water remover in the gas tank. I tried starting fluid and little bit of gas in the intake but it still didn't start. Could it be the distributor cap that's causing it not to fire?

 

Battery is less then a month old, starter works, and relays are all good.

 

Grounds are good and terminals were cleaned when I put in the new battery.

 

I also just changed evap canister and purge solenoid.

 

I assume you have tried giving it some gas (1/4 of the way down) or even alot of gas while you are cranking it?

 

yep I had the gas pedal all the way down and pumping over and over again while trying to start, and while putting little amounts of gas into the intake. I've tried gas and starting fluid could it be a distributor problem?

 

Do you have fire from the coil?

 

Could be...an easy test to see if you're getting spark from the distributor and thru the spark plug wires is to get a spark tester and basically all you do is remove the boot from the spark plug one at a time and plug the boot onto the tester (it looks like the end of a spark plug, or mine does it least). These testers usually have a way to ground it to the vehicle (mine has a clamp). Then, have someone try to crank the truck while you watch to see if the tester sparks. do this one at a time for each plug wire. I did this recently for my wife's '02 Mountaineer high energy ignition (HEI) and it told me that the ignition coil pack was bad (it wasn't sending juice to my number 5 spark plug). I was also able to unplug the plug wire boot at the ignition coil (distributor, in your case) and rig it to the distributor/ignition coil port to verify that the coil really wasn't able to send juice to that wire.