Hi everyone.
I'm having a problem with my truck that seems to be fairly common but after searching the forum I've seen no definitive solution. I'll be as thorough as I can and see if anyone has any magical insight.

Truck:
'05 Dakota, 4.7L, 6-speed manual, all stock.
Bought new, now has 170K with no major problems.
New sparkers @ 100K, regular maintenance.

Symptoms:
The first indication something was amiss was a few weeks ago. After taking a corner and accelerating out in 2nd I got a "bing bing bing" like a lights on or something. Binged 6 times or so then quit with no other symptoms. No CEL.

A week or so later the truck sputtered badly, like complete loss of ignition or fuel while passing through the exact same intersection at three different times! Oddly, this seems to happen quite a bit from what I've read. Once the truck died and restarted, other two times sputtered hard but did not die. This intersection is at the end of a long coast btw, at about 35mph and for probably 2-3 minutes.

A few days after that while cruising at 65 with the cruise on the truck quit suddenly and would not restart. Had it towed home fairly confident the problem was the fuel pump. Next day though it started right up. ??? Checked codes and got P2074 which indicates TPS and MAP values out of sync. Sensors are cheap enough so I replaced the TPS and just for giggles thoroughly cleaned the IAC and throttle body since a dirty IAC had caused a stalling problem years before. No fix.

Next step was replacing the MAP sensor and air filter. Nope. Only difference now is that I get no codes.

I have thoroughly checked for vacuum leaks with spray and all wiring looks good. I've jiggled various connectors and wiring with the truck running and it makes no difference.

In between dying events the truck runs great. No rough running, good power, steady idle. The problem does seem to show up only after full warm-up but other than that shows no real pattern now.

During a sputter event all the dash lights will light off and on like the ignition is being cycled rapidly.

After one event the airbag light was on. ??? After flashing the PCM though this went away and hasn't recurred.

So a few questions:

Has anyone ever had a fuel pump fail intermittently?
If this were happening on a non-computerized vehicle I might suspect water in the fuel. Thoughts?
I read a TSB here about spark plugs and an intermittent coil. Has anyone done this repair with good luck? Current plugs have 70K on them.
I understand cam/crank sensor can fail intermittently, anyone have this turn out to be the problem?

I know this will probably have to be caught by a scanner when the problem happens but I really can't afford a shop or dealer so I'm hoping someone has actually cured this problem.

Any help or thoughts, no matter how wacky are greatly appreciated.

Allen

 

these trucks only like oem sensors, forget those autozone or advanced auto crap. as for plugs, what are you running? truck doesn't like a platinum plug, only oem copper, also now that the winter blend gas is here, try using a higher octane to see if your problem occurs still, once a pump is on its way out, they just go.