hello all of my fellow HEMI owners! ha

i have a 2004 ram hemi. i bought it a while back after totaling my first ram. when i bought it i noticed that the "HEMI tick" was noticeably louder than my first one but i didnt bother worrying because i know some have it some dont, some are louder some arent.....

well saturday i was taking my regular 90 min drive back home and about 30 minutes into it the truck started jumping and skipping horribly, i let off the gas and saw the rpms drop to... well way below normal. it would still drive but really bad, until i hit the next red light, tapped the brakes, and she was a gonner. dead. so i pulled it off the road and she wouldn't crank back up. just kept turning over and over and over with a break in the firing order.

welllllll to make a long story short and not bore you guys, i towed it home and pulled my plugs, wires, intake,...... off and checked each cylinder's compression.
cylinder 2 - 170 pounds
cylinder 4 - 172 pounds
cylinder 6 - 0 !!!!
theres my problem. so i ordered new gaskets right away to be prepared to take the valve cover off. did that and took a look inside to find that one of my valve springs (exhaust valve to be exact) decided to snap in half and hang out and not do his job.
sooooo my main point here is to put my 2 cents in for the "HEMI tick"

the ram is back on the road after a day and a half of trial and error AND my tick, my friends, is GONE. that's G O N E, gone.

a couple more notes: it threw no OBD II codes, it had a rough crank every now and then about three weeks before this happened, and the spring is hard to find but a stealership will still sell it to you for 3.75. (not bad if you know your way around the motor a little bit and can save the labor of someone else trying to find the problem)

so i feel really good, and proud that i took a ~ 500 - 1500 dollar job, maybe more, and took in into my own hands and bought the part for 4 bucks and fixed it myself.

let me know guys if you have any questions

 

i forgot that when i used to have the rough crank every now and then, i took it to auto zone and they pulled code p0300. but later on when the spring popped i guess, i cleared the codes and the code never showed back up.
so code p0300 might be the beginning of this problem

 

Well, i dont doubt you had some valvetrain noise, but the Hemi tick isn't from guys driving around with broken valve springs. Otherwise, mine must of broke at 400miles.

I'd like to rid my engine of the plague, but I dont think its gonna be possible without a valve job and upgraded springs. At 9kmi, I think I'll leave it be for a bit.

 

Unfortunately you found a somewhat common issue with older 03 and some 04 HEMI engines. Thankfully the engine didnt drop the valve but kept it in place. Also thankfully you do have good mechanical sense and found the issue and resolved it. P0300 is also a common code that can come from several different things. Glad you got it all resolved and back running though.

Next time, bring some pics with you.

 

Awesome!

That is why I like working on and fixing (or at least trying to) my own stuff. I really like knowing that I fixed it. I get far more satisfaction and joy out of doing that than doing what I sit at this blasted computer and do all day. I also like thinking about the the toys I get to buy instead of giving that $ to someone else.

Unfortunately, I am in the same boat at the moment, but decided to replace all of them so I am waiting for the parts to come in.

http://www.hensonmotorsports.com/mer...tem.php?id=244
http://www.hensonmotorsports.com/mer...tem.php?id=784

 

Now if any of you can help me fix this PS3 to get my kids out of my hair....

 

There are PS3 forums for that, seriously. I used to mod XBOX1's and repaired my own two XBOX 360's.

 

i almost think the ticking is just a chrysler engine or chrysler V8 thing. I can hear ticking on my 4.7 which it had from the get go and I really don't have any serious issues.