Wife called, she said truck started running horrible, then CEL started blinking, then the engine died while she was driving. She was able to pull it off to the side of the road and restart, and get it to limp home. Any ideas what happened? I sent a text to my mechanic friend, not sure if he is in town.

 

Not a clue without the code, gotta pull the code on that one. Limp mode can range from a simple, easy fix to a major problem...

 

Code I read by toggling key 3 times says P0300, I'm guessing misfire cylinder 3? Why would a misfire have the CEL blinking and cause the engine to stall? This truck is starting to PMO. I had the long dilemma trying to figure out the misfire in cylinder 2, after replacing all plugs, and coil pack, back and forth to friend and dealer, they wound up replacing the injector and it cleared the problem. What has me curious is the dealer said they swapped the injector from cylinder 2 to cylinder 3 and the misfire followed to that cylinder, so they changed the injector. Why do I have another misfire again on cylinder 3 this time? What can be causing misfire after misfire? Thinking of dumping this truck.

 

P0300 is a multiple cylinder misfire, if the P030X code ends in a digit 1-8 it indicates the cylinder that is misfiring, but when it ends in 0, it indicates multiple cylinders are misfiring.

Could be cause by a lot of things: Bad PCM, multiple bad injectors/plugs, I've even seen an EGR stuck open cause it as well as a clogged cat or a vacuum leak at the intake manifold. Common cause is a blown head gasket as well...

 

CEL will flash when catalytic converter damage can occur.

 

Mechanic friend stopped by this morning, brought his mini OBDII with him. Code still showed P0300 multiple cylinder misfire. Checked a few things, noticed a severe stumble when barely touching the gas at idle, then power braking felt a stumble at 1500 that would clear up after 2000rpm's. At that point he didn't think it was camshaft or crankshaft sensor related but more Throttle related. While the car was running, he disconnected the gas pedal sensor, allowed the engine to run up as it didn't sense the pedal, shut the engine off, restarted, shut off, then reconnected the gas pedal sensor. Amazingly all of the stumbling disappeared! We took it out for a test ride and the truck ran perfect, smooth as can be. If the stumble comes back, he told me to repeat the disconnect reconnect process to get home, then replace the pedal/throttle assy. Will keep everyone posted if the problem comes back.

 

well after a few miles the bucking and loss of power returned. Have to wait until tomorrow to order a new gas pedal assy and see if that does the trick. If it is expensive, we are going to use my friends scanner to check the pedal sensor to see if it is indeed bad. Will keep you all posted. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know!

 

P030x will not shut the truck off BTW. That might be an issue but you are looking for something else also

 

Update:

After speaking with the local Dodge dealer, it turns out that 2005 Rams and early 2006 Rams have suspect gas pedal assemblies (sensors). The local Dodge dealer said they (not sure if he meant his local shop or all of Dodge) are seeing a demand of 22 per month, and the part is on National Back Order! The suspect part number I had in the truck was 53032753AC. That part has been superceded by part # 53032794AB. There were all of 2 parts available within a 4 hour radius of my house, so I drove 2.5 hrs this morning to grab one of those 2 and installed it this afternoon. I have 35 miles on this new pedal and so far everything is running fine. I averaged 20.3 mpg's on my way to work, so it looks like the engine is running well. I'm knocking on wood as I write this and hope this was indeed the issue. I will post again if it was not. Hope this info helps others.

 

Good luck. I hope that fixed it.