Engine/Transmission (1998.5 - 2002) no throttle response

[RGRAT1618]

When driving back from state college, I hit a straight level section of the high way. I was crusing at about 65mph then I can up to the start of the summit. I hit my foot down on the throttle and nothing hapened. The truck did not down shift, boost did not go up and EGT did not rise. I Pushed up and down 3 time on the pedel with no change. On the forth time the Truck dow shifted and I took offf up the mountin. Since than it has done the same thing to me a couple of times. I am looking for anything to look at. I am going to be doing the same trip again out hauling close to 10,000lbs. Thanks as always.



Rob

 

[JR2]

99% its your APPS or accelerator peddle position sensor. Yours sounds like it is having some problems. I did a search for ya and you can do lots of reading here.



What the APPS does is tell the ECM where the "go peddle" is. It basically sends a voltage to the ECM that relates to the amout of peddle you are applying. It is known to cause all sorts of problems when it starts going bad. It sounds like yours is an intermitiant problem. Here is what I would do, after it happens again do the key cycle thing to get any codes the engine has set. You do this by turning the key to the on positon and off again three times and leaving it in the on positon the thrid time. Watch the odo window and write down what it says. Then come back and tell us what it said.



This item is covered under the warranty and is a Dodge item only, ie you will not buy one at NAPA for less.



Hope this helps.



John

 

[JR2]

You can try recalibrating the APPS:



**stole this from another thread so I did not have to type**Try recalibrating the APPS. This sometimes helps.



1) unhook both battery grounds, some say for 5 min or 30 min.

2) Hook up battery's.

3) Turn the key to run, do not start

4) push go pedal slowly to the floor and back three times.

5) turn off key.

6) apps now calibrated

7) drive truck.



This may or may not help, since your problem seems to be a total lack of voltage I am thinging that it will not, but it sure will not hurt anyting either.



John

 

[tarussell]

Mine had been doing the exact same thing for a few thousand miles. My APPS checked out fine and I spent a lot of time trying to find a solution to that problem and finally replaced the injecter pump and the problem is gone.

I wanted to avoid the dealer for fear of letting a not so qualified tech underneath my hood but I finally decided to use my warranty and test the local tech at my dealer. I told them all what I had checked and they rechecked what we had discussed. The Day Star Tech line gave a two page list of things to check and all was in spec. The Tech line was stumped and they approved a new pump because they had no other direction to try.

To get to the point a new pump fixed my problem and the truck runs great again.

I spent a lot of time chasing what I thought was an electrical problem and it turned out to be the internal pressure ( or lack of ) in the VP44 . My truck would do as you described at various RPM's and seemed to do it most often when I cruised at a steady rate and then go to excellerate.

I could not find out anymore about why the pump did this do to lack of knowledge of the dealer and the tech was just glad the truck was fixed and going out the door.

HTH , Thomas