oops, forgot to mention that you can take your truck to a muffler shop and have them do a temp test on the cat by putting the truck on a lift, running the rpm up to about 2500 and test the input temp & output temp. the output temp should be approx 50 deg hotter than the input temp.

They will tell you that it is not a very good test to tell if it's working right or not, but it has been my experince (6 for 6) that every time that test failed, the cat was bad.

I think that if your cat is plugged it will restrict airflow too much & cause you to loose power. I had one where the brick broke into two pieces and shifted sideways causing some blockage. Once I swapped it out, I could not believe how much power was down...

worth checking out.

 

I'd take it to a good tune-up shop and let them throw it on the oscilliscope..they could isolate the cylinder causing the problem..with a rough idle you can be dealing with anything from low compression, a bad valve, an intake or vaccum leak, as well as air fuel mixture problems or a bad plug wire. An exhaust gas analyzer would also help..generally high hydrocarbons would indicate an electrical problem (ignition) while high co is more fuel related...better to pin point the problem than to guess.....

 

[:@]I JUST GOT THE RAM BACK AND THEY SAID THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT ....WELL I KNOW IM NOT CRAZY ....LATER ON THAT DAY I WAS DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD AND I TURNED THE WHEEL AND IT STARTED TO MAKE A POPPING NOISE OR CLUNCKING NOISE AND HAS PROCEEDED TO GET WORSE I LOOKED UNDER MY TRUCK BUT EVERYTHING SEEMS NORMAL ANYONE HAVE THIS HAPPEN TO THEM BEFORE IF SO WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM

 

Ratchet: did you check your fuel pressure? If so what was it? Mine has the shakes & I'm conviced it's because of the high fuel pressure (49psi). I did a fresh tune up & no shakes for a couple of hundred miles, but then they came back. yanked the plugs & found that my #4 cylinder was gas fouled. I'm planning on adding an adjustable regulator soon, hopefully this weekend and set it up so @ hi vacuum pressure is low 35~37psi & 45 psi max. I figure if I stay within the 35-45 FP spec I should be o.k. BTW, the #4 injector flows really well... to good actually I might have to swap them out for a matched set.

 

No... I haven't gotten around to checking my fuel pressure yet. After working on cars all day long, it seems like the last thing I want to do is pull my own truck in and work on it. I'll get to it soon though. By the way, I think I remember reading in the owners manual that the fuel pump/regulator/filter assembly is covered under warranty for a longer period of time than the other components. I don't have mine handy, otherwise I'd look... but you may want to check yours. Maybe you can get it covered.

 

has this problem been solved yet??

 

JUST GOT MY PROBOLEM FIXED, BOTH CV JOINTS HAD GONE OUT AND MY BALL JOINTS WERE GOING [sm=smiley35.gif] AND A COUPLE DAYS AGO MY FEUL PUMP GAVE OUT ....[sm=smiley34.gif]...SHE SURE IS RUNING GOOD NOW THOUGH $ 843 LATER BUT ITS ALL WORTH IT NOW I CAN GET BACK 4 WHEELING[sm=smiley1.gif]

 

so i can assume your fuel pressure was low then? as c/v joints would not account for shaking at idle.

 

yess ... it was the fuel pump that did ill for my idle and the shaking soon as it was replaced instant differance its like new again

 

as for my cv s and ball joints they my truck wander all over the road and killed my tires