Pcm and weak battery till you got a little more charge, nothing to worry
about.
Rascal
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net
[mailto:owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net] On Behalf Of Michael
Maskalans
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 12:43 PM
To: dakota-truck@dakota-truck.net
Subject: DML: Dak doesn't want to stay running
So I finally got my truck mostly put back together after Daktoberfest last
night, and discovered a problem. I had to jump start it since while it
was sitting on the jackstands I guess I left they key on a notch too far
to keep the wheel unlocked, and ran the battery dead. I jumped it, it
started fine, idled fine after I disconnected the battery.
I really wanted to take it for a drive to feel the improvements that I'd
made to the steering but let it idle for about 5-10 minutes first, lights
and fan off, to charge up.
I jumped in, turned on the lights and defrost and started backing down the
driveway to turn around, and the truck gently died. Battery needle was
around 11.5-12v, so I shut everything off and restarted it. cranked a bit
weakly but fired, didn't want to stay running. would just idle down too
far and die. if I held it above 1500 it was fine. after a minute or so
it would idle at 650 (normal idle) hapilly. it would idle in gear
stopped, but when I went slowly at idle it would die.
I ran it for long enough that it would hold 13v even after it died with
the lights on so I don't think it's a battery issue. I took it for about
a 5 mile test drive so if it's a PCM learning issue I'd expect that to
have cured itself. My only other thought is maybe something related to
transmission control + cold weather (30deg F or so) + bad RWSS = maybe not
bumping up idle speed when in gear and rolling slowly?
I'm going out of town for 9 days starting tonight so it will get to sit
and think about it's problems and if I'm lucky fix itself but this strikes
me as very strange. Ran fine and had power on the road, battery seemed to
hold its own just fine after the truck ran for a while.
guesses?
BACKSTORY FOR THOSE WHO CARE:
why did my truck sit for a month after daktoberfest? becuase it hates me.
I thought I broke an axle at Daktoberfest, just turning a corner on the
trail, so I got fed up and upgraded my front axle shafts (Moser chromo
shafts and CTM joints for those who care) but once I recieved the parts
and got it torn down I found that I hadn't broken a shaft, but skipped a
hub and it hadn't relocked. It was full of crap and I had a spun outer
wheel bearing due to a missing spindle seal. So I got all that put
togther, breaking a caliper key lock bolt in the process (which is still
one of a few things in need of fixing) along with taking care of a
long-standing steering design flaw - a process which took a few different
tries at parts purchasing and some pretty significant grinding and
drilling of the Ram pitman arm I finally went with. This was accomplished
last night along with replacing my rear axle pinion yoke which had had the
ujoint caps spinning for long enough to introduce side-to-side slop in the
yoke. Of course I didn't manage to get yoke completely seated so I can't
let the truck coast right now, I found on my test drive. so I need a
bigger cheater bar to keep tightening the pinion nut. but aside from that
pinion backlash issue and the broken bolt, it's almost back to 100%.
There's a bit of paint work that needs to be done before it sees salt and
some t-case fluid topping off to do since it didn't have a rear driveshaft
in it for a while too..... so like I said, my Dakota has that Jeep Thing.
I think it burns when I pee now =( ;-)
-- MikeM SAS thing
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Dec 01 2005 - 10:10:44 EST