Zach wrote:
>ok, specs. 1992 Dakota 3.9L A500 2WD, around 170K.
Truck is sportin' a nice PowerDemon S tranny with OEM type Dacco
converter
that was installed about 3K ago. Lately, my mpg has been
dropping and
dropping slowly and the truck is starting to drive like crap. I
have been
able to pull 20 mpg out of this truck all the way past 160K and
now it's
down to 16 mpg no matter what I do. And it sucks, a month ago
it was 16.5
mpg so it's just dropping and dropping. At some stops I'm
getting a wierd
random banging type sound from the engine compartment. I
haven't gotten to
duplicate, might just be something loose. But today when
checking the
fluids I notice there seems to be a bit of oil residue that
seems to be
coming from the spark plug hole on the front right cylinder from
drivers
perspective. Any help on what could be causeing this? Thanks,
sorry so
long.
Zach Burcham
92dakotahd
www.bsu.edu/web/ztburcham
____________________________________________________
Hey Zach,
have you checked your motor mounts lately? Mine wore out, and the motor was
torquing to the right *a lot*. Caused the fan to hit the overflow bottle
for the radiator, and whacked the fan shroud a couple of times. It's worth
taking a look at, anyway.
As far as oil in the spark plug hole, my first (optimistic) thing to check
would be the valve cover gaskets. If they are leaking, oil can drip down to
the spark plugs. On the downside, you may just have oil getting past your
rings with 170k on her.
Just for giggles, I checked with a client yesterday on a Jasper engine. 3
year, 75k warranty, $2,419 for the 318, $291 for the engine "kit", $410 for
labor, and then there's tax. That's a whole lotta money for a 10 year old
Dak..... but I'm kind of in your situation, too. New tranny and rear this
year, and I'd hate to get rid of the truck!
Brett Forehand
'94 Dakota Sport CC 5.2 Auto
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