Hey guys i have an early 95 ram 1500 4x4 auto sweet little truck has always run nice no real issues. a couple of days ago i fired it up to go to work starts fine warm up for 20-30 seconds then pop it into gear to back out and it stalls. start it again no issue put my foot on the brake it stalls....odd so i leave it there and come back to it today to do some tests. first i thought it may be the brake booster as when i push the brakes it stalls so i pinch off the vac line to the intake no change, next i think ok battery i have a couple of spare good batteries that are almost new pop one in no change check the charge it is 13.70-14.20 so that should be ok. i noticed i don't have to use the brakes to stall it i can make it run rough by turning on the headlights and if i have them on and turn on the blower motor it will slowly die so it seems to be electrical or if there is a load on the electrical. sound familiar to anyone?

 

so no takers.....

 

I would check grounds

 

Does it still maintain 14 volts or so as you turn on various electrical accessories?

 

yes it holds the 14 volts. i was surprised to see it did as it just dies right out when you put any electrical load on it, the thing i find odd is it does it when you hit the brakes too so the is the brake lights and what else? abs system? it is rear abs only. battery connections are clean truck is oiled regularly for rust prevention and the grounds i have looked at are clean.

 

i might try a couple of supplemental grounds to see if that changes anything.

 

I am a fan of extra grounds also, but in your case I would be curious about the Idle speed to begin with. Like a dirty iac valve making for a low idle speed.

 

This too

 

I agree with mopar fanatic , torxhead and heyyou. Grounds or lack of grounds do weird things.

I put my project together and had all kinds of weird electrical problems. In park or neutral gauge lights would flicker, gauges would start, restart but once I put it in drive it would work fine

found out I had no dedicated ground from chassis to engine, was getting ground through transmission to driveshaft to differential and finally through the ring and pinion. Drove me nuts till I figured it out and my engine at the time was carbureted just imagine what a floating ground like that would do to fuel injection.

Check and make sure there is no corrosion on the ground cables. Check the ground in the wire harness on the front, drivers side head, pull it off, clean it with scotch brite pad and reinstall it. That ground at the head grounds EVERYTHING to do with the fuel injection

one more thing to check, there are 3 connectors near the brake booster, gray, dark gray and black,( c125-c126-c127) those 3 connectors run the whole engine and trans, pop them apart one by one and make sure they are not water contaminated or you see any corrosion on the pins.

viperdave

 

thanks for the info Viperdave and others. it idles fine at around 700 or so very smooth there is not a lot of corrosion on this truck due to frequent rustproofings but i will revisit the grounds and conectors mentioned as well as adding a couple of extra's the truck is an unmolested truck that has been well cared for and is stock.