Guys,

I have been troubleshooting electrical gremlins on my Charger now for a few weeks and I thought I had them figured out...

Right now I have an issue where the car will die after 10-15 minutes of running. The idle will start getting real rough and she just dies.

This was the case before and I swapped out the ECU on the firewall and problem solved or so I thought....

No the problem is back. This time I can restart the motor but it won't idle (cuts off) and if I rev it up, it goes up but then after coming down it dies.

Cranking the car from cold, everything acts normal until it warms up.

Now, what I did do (stupid me) was leave the key in the run position over night (12hrs or so) and needless to say, my battery was dead. I charged it back up with a battery charger and fired it up and now the issue is back.

Could that kill the ECU? Could this be a coil issue? This is a brand new $20 parts store ECU. I can't imagine that sucker was bad outta the box. I drove it 20-30 minutes on it before this incident and the Charger ran fine...

Can anybody help point me in the right direction? I have pretty much ruled out grounding issues and the charging system. System was charging when it dies so its not a dead battery...plus I can crank it after it dies all day.

Please

What's the Problem? single choice
	Coil
	ECU
	None of the above - please explain?
Votes accepted starting: 10/18/12 01:00 PM
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ECU, your describing exactly my problem,and mine was brand new as well. for 20.00 grab another new one and another for your trunk

Coil is failing. I've seen it before. The engine starts fine and when the coil reaches a certain temperature the coil stops working.

R.

Could be, or it could just be a failure.

The second time I saw this was on a friend's boat, he'd almost get out of the "wakeless speed zone" and the engine would die. It was an inboard-outboard. When I changed the coil with a junk coil I had laying around and solved the problem, he looked at me as if I were Einstein.

R.

this is where i yank the ecu plug and ditch the ecu.

drop in a points dist hooking the dist wire to - side of coil,just remove the stock wire that is there on the - side of coil.

hit the key and ride. when I get the funds up, I jump the BR for a full 12 volts to coil and add an pertronix points conversion with the 40,000 volt flamethrower coil.

done this a bunch of times on mine and others mopars on the side of the road with a points dist. but once converted to pertronix I have never had to work on any ign., problems again.

if I stay with points,i do have to reset them every 3 months or so but thats the way point are.

been running the pertronix set up for the last 17 yrs now and for a tune up it gets a cap/wires/plugs only. never mis-fires and will spin 7000rpm+

good luck changing stock ign. parts out.

before you replace anything make sure you ground you ECU, with a wire from your battery. destroyed 2 ECUs because they were not grounded good thru the mounting screws. would start up fine, drive some where would not start. wait, or get a jump; start fine.after you ground it you may still need to get an ECU.

I would have a spare ECU, coil and ballast. In your shoes, I'd probably change all at once. Not good trouble shooting procedure but a sick coil can hurt the ECU and vica versa.

I don't know where you all are buying your parts, but in over 20 years of driving MoPars I have replaced 1 coil, zero ecu's and zero ballast resistors. Quit buying junk.

Try checking your grounds

You have a ballast resistor?

hard to say for sure, could be anything. but, something electrical is not likeing the heat.

what happened to me was similar, when the car got hot, it started missing, backfiring, and running like crap. it finally stalled and wouldn't re-start.

after it all cooled down, the car started right up.


I replaced the coil because someone here said the coil was breaking down when it got hot.

problem never came back.

Swap coils.
R.

those can expand when hot as well, causing your problems. Sorry, I thought with Mopars everyone always had spare resisitors and swapped 'em at the first sign of ignition trouble! I had a Power Wagon with wiring issues, and it would eat resistors and ECUs like candy before I figured out the wiring problems.

JS

Resistance=heat. the winding could be broken,,but still touching.
The ecu switches the neg side of the coil circuit. so if there was no reduction of voltage,,the ecu would be switching up to 14v instead of 9. But you have a resistor so,, carry on.

OK so replaced/swapped:

- ECU
- coil
- ballast resistor

The problem is still there. Car will run for about 10-15 minutes...I can rev it up idle it just fine.

Once thing I noticed is that when the electric fans kick on, the engine tends to want to idle lower. I am not sure if the draw from the fans is making this problem worse or not.

Funny thing is, I had run fine with these fans and the OEM 60 amp alternator just fine before. I can't see why this would be a charging issue. Also, despite this, the ammeter doesn't show a dicharge at idle until the fans + light are on. The it starts losing and the battery begins to discharge a bit.

Still this shouldn't kill the engine. After it cuts off, the motor can still crank so battery isn't dead.

Could this be a wiring issue? If so, which wire would cause this so consistantly?

I am stuck here. I don't know what else to check. The only thing that has changed since this issue began is the alternator (went to 100 amp unit). However, as I have said before the car dies even when it's reving up (charging) and the battery has PLENTY left....

Checkd grounds, etc...all good. Plug wires are new. Plugs are pretty new as well.

Any other ideas??? What else can stop a running motor except for a bad ignition circuit?