The check engine light was not on, which I thought was odd.

I wish I had had time to get an OBD 1 reader hooked up. The local auto parts stores don't have one (I've asked before), and I hadn't had issues that I couldn't diagnose myself with this truck, in years.

I got up to go to school, after having given up the night before, swapped the relay and depressed the schrader valve on the fuel rail after letting the fuel pump engage. I got a good squirt of fuel, and turned the truck over for grins. Fired right up perfectly. A good lhard test drive showed no signs of further issues. I chocked it up to a bad fuel pump relay and drove to school. Trans and engine worked perfectly.

Got out of school about 8 hours later, truck baking in the Florida sun. Ran like absolute garbage. I barely got 300 yards down the road. Check engine light still wasn't on.

I am not experienced enough with transmissions to know if this is an internal issue in the transmission. My common sense says no, because other than the sticky governor, it's worked perfectly. I suspect that they could have damaged that sensor during the install, or that the fuel pump is just going out.

I appreciate your help, Nitrous. I will post everything that they tell me.

Just because the fuel seems to squirt strong a gauge needs to be used to get actual pressure. I can tell you how many times customers said the pressure was good on the squirt test so the pump is ok. Not.

That's actually a huge relief. I am absolutely not an expert, and I really want this to be a single simple issue like a bad fuel pump. I've gotten over 80,000 miles out of this pump, and it does surge alittle bit first thing in the morning, so it's probably been getting weaker for a while. And who knows how long it was driven before I bought it on this fuel pump. I'm the third or fourth owner.

Again, thank you Nitrous, all of this is being extremely educational.

Did you get it back up and running?

I got the truck back from the shop yesterday.

They kept it and tried to get it to replicate the issues that I was having. They were unable to, thankfully said that they were uncomfortable replacing the fuel pump, and just put some fuel dryer in the tank. For the diagnostics and the fuel dryer I was out the door for $89.

I got the truck most of the way home and then it started doing the exact same thing. I guess it would only act up when the truck was hot, running at highway speeds in overdrive. I limped the truck back to the shop. They diagnosed a bad distributor component. They replaced the whole distributor and the truck only missed twice minorly on the way home yesterday. Bill was $260. Super honest people, and their prices are VERY good.

Driving back home today from school I was doing 1800 to 2000 rpms in overdrive and it started missing. Every ten or fifteen seconds it will miss and lurch alittle. Not nearly as badly as before, but very noticeably.

What in the world am I facing here? This is all new, post transmission rebuild.

still could be water in the fuel.

Could water in fuel have caused my old distributor to fail? I ask because I genuinely believe that I did get water in my fuel, and replacing the distributor has helped immensely. I'm stumped.

The distributor replacement did help immensely, so I believe that it really did go bad.

Drove the truck to and from school today. It misses when accelerating, and at highway speeds, pretty much all the time. It's not anywhere near as bad as it was before the distributor was replaced. Before then it would shudder and lurch and try to die. Now it's a light miss that is like the truck is missing a beat, rather than a hard shudder.

I'm going to ohm out all of the injectors over the weekend. Does anyone have any recommendations for things to check? If this is a timing issue, outside of the injectors and the distributor, where else should I look?

Plugs or wires would be my guess.

The plugs and wires have less than 10k miles on them, but I will swap them if you think it's possible something has gone bad in there, Nitrous.

I'm using NGKs, but have heard good thing about Champions, for the 5.9L Magnum.

I like NGK and with either them or Champion I have had no issues. You could OHM each plug wire. Most likely it is just one hole not firing 100%. Lots of cheap wires on the market. Seeing the distributor was replaced there are a couple things you should check. One make sure all the wires are seated correctly. And secondly ask the shop how they set the distributor. The distributor needs to have the sync signal set. If it is not set correctly it can cause some erratic running.

One other item is there was a TSB on erratic running due to plug wire routing. Take some time to find that TSB and follow what it says on routing.

TSB 18-48-98

Thank you, I will follow that TSB down now, Nitrous. I will call the shop and ask them if they set the sync signal, tomorrow after class. They're really helpful so should be a non issue if it needs to be adjusted.

Found it. Here's the link for anyone else who might need it. I also have it saved as a pdf, in case link is down I can email it.

https://testing-public.carmd.com/Tsb/Download/31575/080022dc80bbf784


Nitrous, do you recommend running some injector cleaner through, just in case? If so, any recommended products? The gas that I normally use is Chevron, so should have a mild cleaner in it. This is also the gas station that I may have gotten some contaminated fuel at, though.

When they changed your fuel pump they should of made sure the tank was clean. For the most part injectors are relatively trouble free. However if a fuel system is compromised with contaminants the injectors could be restricted. As I recall that system does not have a return so all particles can get trapped on the injectors inlet screen. Normally this is not a service repair to clean them. Most just replace them. However here is a trick I have used. Remove the injectors. Rig up a power and ground to power the injector from a 12 volt source. With the injector powered it will open the pintle off the seat. Take a nice clean white rag and you can reverse flush the injector with carb cleaner and compressed air. I like to clean and blow the contaminants into the rag just to see what comes out. Reverse flush will push the debris back out of the injector. I would do the other items I mentioned first. Check plugs, wires, wire routing, distributor sync signal .

The shop said that the fuel pressure tested ok, so they didn't change the fuel pump. They put a drying chemical in the tank and did a diagnostic.

Today I traced out the plug wires, following the TSB and did the best I could with it. I realized that one of the wires was laying on my passenger side header, cylinder number six. I replaced this wire because I just went ahead and assumed that it was damaged by the heat, as the plastic wire loom was burned. I also replaced the single ignition coil for the system, located near the idler pulley.

The truck ran better and only missed a few times on the way home. I also added half a container of marvel mystery oil to the tank when I changed the ignition coil. I noticed a power gain, whether it was from the coil or the mystery oil I am unsure.

When it missed today it felt the same as the other days, it was only the frequency with which it happened that was different.

I called the shop and they acted baffled when I asked about the distributor sync signal. They just said that they installed the distributor at TDC and hooked the wires up. I don't know what the sync signal refers to, honestly.

You need to have the sync signal set. All they did is install the distributor. It is not like the old days of using a timing light. Some scan tools have functions that will allow setting the signal. There are more complicated ways with setting the crank balancer at a certain position and using an OHM meter on the distributor pick up to adjust it. Very important setting.

This shop has no idea what that adjustment is, so I may have to source another technician. I do not believe that this is something that I can do myself.

A call to the Dodge dealership let me know that they don't work on anything older than 2005. So I sent an email to the automotive department at my school to see if they'd be able to do this adjustment. I included the pdf from the link that you sent me, Nitrous. Thank you so much for your help.

I found a local old school mechanic who knew exactly what this was. The truck gets dropped off on Monday with him. Hopefully this clears it up. He said "Yeah, if the distributor hasn't been synced your fuel will be off and you'll get misses under load." I emailed him that sync signal bulletin, so he's on the same page.