Yeah, and it failing would be FAR to exciting.

 

As long as you got your face shield on you're gold!

 

Ok so I hate to beat a dead horse but I'm stubborn when it comes to this sort of thing and I'd like to figure out exactly what was wrong

Somewhere in the forum I stumbled across someone who said their truck wouldn't shift into 1st until they cleared the code and then it was fine. So me being me I cleared all the codes again and I still had 1757 and 740 that I hadn't cleared as well as the plethora of codes from not having the transmission plugged in.

But re connected it and cleared the codes and took it for a drive and it did everything perfectly. Every gear when I wanted not a hitch both column and auto. Well, somewhere around 40mph I get random throttle fluctuations of ~500rpm but that's a different story. (I'm figuring dump some injector cleaner and check distributor)

I drove 10 miles to the shop and 10 miles back. Pulling into town I was curious to test the downshift on the column and it went 3rd to 2nd but not 2nd to 1st. So I drove another 1/8 of a mile and at a stop sign it went back to its old tricks of trying to start in 2nd. Then check engine flashed again. Same codes.

Drove to my house, cleared the codes (,1757 and 0740) it half started to do it's 2nd gear shenanigans again and then it downshifted to 1st and away I went. Everything worked fine again . Drove around town a couple loops and parked it and everything was fine.

Any new ideas?

 

You have an electronics issue

 

So, I've followed along silently because I was experiencing the exact same issues. I also own a 2000 Dakota. So I got adventurous, even tho Dakota is manual and ram is auto I pulled the PCM from Dakota and tried in ram. I was stunned, but it completely changed the game. I had instant response to throttle, manually shifting as no automatic signals issued. Checked codes, a couple weird unknowns (from auto manual differences) but the p1757 and p0740 we're GONE. found correct PCM from online company. After it arrived, swapped out and TAH DAH! 77 MILES with no problem codes! I finally get to get emissions done, and it works like it only has 192 miles on it, not 192,000 lol! Hope it's the solution you need. Oh got my PCM for under $400 through a seller online, but I can't find anything with the sellers info tho, and I did have to ship bad unit to them, but like I wanted it anyway. I want to say powertrainparts.com, but not 100%. I will scoure my shop to find packing slip. Box got burned, if I locate I will post. PCM!
Good luck, I hope it's what it needs!