First I'd like to introduce myself, Casey, and thank you all in advance for your assitence.

My wife has a 2005 Stratus SXT (4 banger). A couple of months ago she got her oil changed at a shop instead of letting me do it. The tech naturally tried to sell her a new air filter by taking hers off and showing her how dirty it was. When she got home that night I was waiting with her filter to install myself. When I went to take the filter out of the filter box her filter box detached from the car, from her intake tube, and the air sensor fell out of the tube. I don't know what the tech did to it, but I barely touched the thing. I've never seen anything like it before. So I changed the filter, and tightened everything down again.

The next day she called me and said she couldn't drive the car, and had pulled over on the freeway. I went and traded cars with her to see what was going on. The car was very jerky, rough, and had little power. It also had some difficulty braking, and reved when at a stop.

I took it to a mechanic to get the engine codes, and it came back with a few different ones (sorry I don't remember all of them), but he wasn't sure what the problem was. He said only Dodge could tell me for sure ... naturally, I didn't let him work on the car. I planned to go to the dealership the next day, but the car seemed to repair itself. So after about 3 days of problems the car was driving perfectly again ... until today.

It's started doing the same thing again after several months. My wife describes it like she's being constantly rearended, no acceleration at all, and it is completely random. Sometimes it drives fine, and sometimes it is doing this. She also said that yesterday it kind of sounded like it was going to die, but corrected itself.

I know that one of the codes I had before was the air sensor, but I don't remember the others. I will try to get the codes tomorrow for you guys. Any ideas as to where I should start?

 

Everything is hooked up correctly right? MAF is plugged in? (black box on intake tube)

It sounds like an engine misfire, and on mine, it was pretty brutal. Coil pack went bad.....

Got a pic of the engine bay currently?

 

Check your fuel pressure at the rail. I had the same probem with my 2000 Neon and it was the fuel pump going bad.

 

Well, it started doing it again today. So I had my wife to go an Auto Zone to get the codes for the engine light. It came back as being the cam sensor, or the timing chain. We figure it's the sensor since it doesn't always run with problems. Now I need to find the part to replace it after I check the connections to make sure it is ok. I can't find a diagram of the engine (DOHC 4 cyl.) anywhere. Do you guys know where it is? FYI Dodge has not released this part to the public apparently which means if I can find it I'm probably looking at salvage. I don't want the dealership doing it if I can avoid it.