Bare with me guys. I am 300 miles off shore and am only relaying what my wife is telling me

About 3 weeks ago, after I left for work, wife said truck started acting up. In the morning when leaving for work (cold outside), the truck would have a stumble off idle when she pulled out of the driveway. Then it would pick up and all was fine. Now it seems to be happening more frequently, at stop signs, red lights, etc....

About ten days ago, the truck basically died as she was pulling into a parking lot. Strange thing is, she said the truck was still running, but the brakes and steering acted as if the truck had stalled (hard brake and hard steering)

She turned it off, started it back up, and it went back to "normal". She drove it straight to a shop.

Hooked it up to an analyzer, and ended up replacing the EGR valve.

Truck hasn't died since, but the stumble is still there.

What should I be suspecting here? What can I check once I get home HOPEFULLY in 4 days if weather permits

05 Ram with Hemi and auto.

thanks
Codfish

May want to have the TPS checked. Hemi has it located on the gas pedal and may need to be reset.

Is this something I can do myself, or back to the shop?

So it is located inside the cab/under the dash?

I couldn't find one on the usual parts sites

codfish

How many miles on the unit?

75,000 miles (120,000 km)

Does anyone know if these trucks came with the TPS built into the throttle body? I can find TPS units listed for other RAM engines in 2005, but not the 5.7s

codfish

Your Ram is eqipped with the 5.7L Hemi which is ETC (Electronic Throttle Control). There is a TPS intergrated with the acceleration pedal and one intergrated with the throttle body. Each actually has two inside, for redundency(meaning two on each). I would have have a dealer or someone with a diagnostic tool monitor the values coming off the acceleration pedal to see if they are stable and slowly increase as the pedal is depressed or if the signal is erratic. I highly doubt its the TPS. The voltage values on the pedal TPS are exactly half of one another. Meaning that as the pedal is depressed the voltage values of each TPS will increase. The pedal will have say one reading .50 volts while the other will read 1.00 volts. The Throotle body TPS's are different in their output is opposite. When the throttle body opens; one will read say 4.5 volts and the other will read .5 volts...as you throttle opens up... one will go down while the other goes up...but they will always add up to 5.0 volts when you add each value (4.0v, other reads 1.0v) (3.5v, other reads 1.5v). As I said the accelerator pedal will have one value exactly double of the other value on that pedal. You can monitor the values on a diagnostic scanner and see if they change smoothly etc., Have you changed spark plugs lately on this vehicle? How many miles on them. If they are original they are way late to be changed. They dont go 50,000 like in other engines as they did not use the long life plugs. Its like you change every 30,000 miles... I would install long life plugs when you do it though so you dont have to change as often in the future. After all we are talking 16 plugs.

May want to try some "Heat" gas additive just in case she got some bad fuel with water in it.

My Avenger was having some off idle problems the other day after filling my tank with BP crapoline (only gas station nearby at the time), went back with Speedway gas and it runs perfect now.

Everything kudakid said. It's overdue for plugs.

Also by that mileage the throttle body is usually caked with gunk on the inside because of the closed breather system/the way the intake sucks in all the blowby at all times for pollution control. Easy issue to check for, pull the plastic tube off the throttle body, push the throttle blade open by hand, shine a light in there and have a look. If there is a bunch of crud in there, it's time to clean it. They're usually crudded up bad enough to cause minor driveability issues by 60,000 miles or so.

Service manual says never clean the throttle body, throw it away and buy a new one It's not hard to pull off and clean, just need to be careful no solvent is allowed to get past the shafts, where it can mess up the gears etc on the side.

Check the power booster vacuum hose

Thanks for the info guys. I should make it back to land tomorrow and will see what I can find.

As for the TPS, I did some googling and found a couple of procedures for "resetting" the TPS. Apparently gas and diesel models are done differently, but pretty simple to do. Anyone else every do this with success?

thanks again
Codfish

ps. 8 meter seas suck

Anyone?

codfish

Google, "SpeedTweaks Tips and Tricks (Dodge)", then download and read the PDF document. It will give you a lot of good tuning info including how to "tune" the TPS.

Id start with cleaning the throttle body. Never had to "reset" the tps on one of these and have it solve any sort of problem