On the way out of town the other day, I had my 95 Ram 1500 4x4 set to cruise at about fifty five, and when I went to speed up, I noticed that it had a VERY sluggish response to the throttle, with the truck not wanting to go faster than sixty.. And it seemed like the more I tried, the worse it got. Alarmed, I pulled over, checked for smoke, checked my transmission fluid level, saw nothing amiss, and jumped in my truck to turn it around and drive home.

in the middle of me turning it around, the truck died on me three times before I completed the three point turn. Once I got my truck back on the main highway it did not want to even go past 30 miles an hour without sounding horrible, and it also had a new very loud sucking sound, that got louder whenever I applied for throttl once I got my truck back on the main highway it did not want to even go past 30 miles an hour without sounding horrible, and it also had a new very loud sucking sound, that got louder whenever I applied more throttle. It scared me to the point where I didn’t even want to apply the gas too hard. When I finally stopped back at my house, I took the airbox off the throttlebody and whenever I would apply throttle I could hear a very loud sucking sound coming from inside the throttlebody itself.

From what little research I have done, I am wondering if I might have a clogged catalytic converter. I just replaced a few injector after driving it around for maybe a week with a fuel injector that had gone bad, I don’t know if that could have caused the catalytic converter to clog or what. I have also had a small vacuum leak in the truck for a couple of months now that I haven’t got around to fixing. But the sucking sound It makes is so loud that I know something is bad wrong. Any pointers?

 

If it's the original, yes, it could be the cat. Unplug the front O2 sensor and run it. If it drives better, it's the cat. Whenever I've had the weird sucking sound, it was O2 related.

 

I actually just replaced the O2 sensor about four months ago when it started throwing a code for it. I’ll try that trick when I get home to see if it’s any different but is it possible that it blew some kind of seal past the throttle body? Is that the cause of the sucking sound?

 

A massive vacuum leak will make it run like that, unplug your brake booster for a second while it's running and you'll see what I mean.
A leak like that will make it run super lean because the pcm thinks it's getting a set amount of air flowing past the throttle plates but it has much more getting to the cylinders through the leak.
Check your idle air control valve to see if it's stuck wide open. You could also take a metal plate and block your EGR tube that goes into the intake, The EGR valve might be stuck wide open as well.

 

I knew that I had a small vacuum leak already, I had driven it from Florida to Nebraska a couple months ago and on the way up I noticed that with the cruise set, going up a hill the speed would decrease despite my cruise control being on, and the air conditioning would start blowing out of the defrost vent instead of the front vents. So idk maybe it’s that same leak from before.