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Old 10-05-1999, 01:54 AM
Old Dakota Old Dakota is offline
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Join Date: Oct 1999
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I have a 1988 Dakota 4X4 3.9L with 190,000 miles. (Mine since 50,000). It was rebuilt at 172,000. It idles very roug, despite tune up, TPS, O2 Sensor replacement. I'm only planning to run this truck another 6 mos, 15,000 miles, so I'm not looking to shell out a lot, but would love to get it to ilde smoother.

Any sugestions appreciated.

O D
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Old 10-06-1999, 01:39 PM
400Magnum 400Magnum is offline
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Join Date: May 1999
Location: Grand Ledge, MI, USA
Age: 60
Posts: 239
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Hey O.D.,
I recently had problems with my 3.9L on my 1990 D150 and in the process of tracking down the problem, I discovered the distributor had two major problems.

One, the top bushing in the distributor housing was wore badly on one side and allowing a lot of motion with the distributor shaft.

The other thing, which I don't know if you have it or not, but my distributor is a Hall Effect unit. The shutter plate that determines the spark timing is attached to the distributor shaft with a piece of plastic that has little plastic pins that slide thru holes in the shutter plate and are then melted to hold the two parts together. The melted plastic pins had come loose on mine, allowing for even more variation in timing on top of the wore bushing. It was impossible to get the timing right with all this stuff loose, and caused the engine to run really rough.

You may want to check your internal parts of your distibutor to see if you have the same problem.

The fix was relatively cheap. I went to the junkyard and got a distributor from a small block V-8 that had a lot less miles on it and then just swapped the guts from my distributor to it. I then re-positioned the shutter plate on the piece of plastic where it looked like it had been before it started moving and drilled a few holes and then used a couple of pop rivets to hold it in place. I used a couple of pop rivet washers also to keep from possibly cracking the plastic by clamping down on a small area. Spreading the load over a larger area seemed to be a good idea. So my total expense was about $15.

Good Luck. Hope you find the trouble.

Regards,
400Magnum
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