Here we go….about 2 weeks ago I changed the valve cover gasket on my 95 Dakota Sport (4cyl). While doing so I ended up killing my battery and had to jump start the car. I got around the corner and the car just died, feeling like it ran out of gas or something. I tried to jump start it again but no luck. So I pushed the bastard about half mile back to my house up a hill, which really sucked. The next day I got a new battery, thinking this was the only prob, I put the new batt in and it did not start. I then went under the hood and moved some stuff around and looked for anything obvious to be displaced, got back in and then it fired up…..now 2 weeks later I was driving to school and the truck stalled coming out of a light. I pulled into a parking lot and had a hell of a time getting it started. I hit the gas tank and got back in and it would start working for a min. I thought at this time it must be the fuel pump. After stalling about 20 times to get 5 miles back home I started to look into the problem. Below is a list of things I have done.

-Checked the fuel filter inline to the tank and that was not clogged.

-found that the car would start after waiting a bit rather then hitting the gas tank (starting to not think its fuel pump)

-when I turn the car to the on position I can here the fuel pump engage

-inspected the throttle body and made sure all connections were good. (perhaps it could be a sensor)


After checking all this stuff on Monday and calling my friend over to work on it, the car seemed to be running great. We took it down to the auto parts store about 5 miles and it never stalled. Later that night I went to wal-mart and when I got back it stalled as I pulled into the driveway ( this happened earlier that morning as well.) So I tried to check this and about 50% of the time when I took a right turn into my drive way (second gear clutch down) bumping over the gutter it would stall. Perhaps something is loose. Maybe not. But for the most part the car still ran.

Tuesday I got into my truck around 6am (a lot of morning dew) and I got out of my driveway and half way down the street and the car stalled. This time it did not start again. I pushed it back to my house and then:

-replaced distributor cap
-replaced ignition wires
-replaced spark plugs

Car still wont start

I had my friend come over who is a mechanic at Hyundai so he knew a little bit and we tried everything we could to get the thing to turn over. We had the air cleaner cover off exposing the top of the throttle body. I sprayed some throttle body cleaner into the throttle body and was able to get the car to fire. It ran and sputtered for about 5 mins until I decided to kill it.


A few other things I have discovered while searching for this problem.

-under the hood in the fuse box the 5amp fuse was blown. I had a few more hand so I went to put another one in and it blew soon as I touched it to the terminal.

-inside my car the overhead lamp never worked. I took out the audio deck and this guy that I bought it from had a wire ran from the positive of the bat to the audio deck in order to get it to work. The dedicated line that should be used for the audio unit is not pulling any voltage nor is the acc. power on. But I had the door open and I touched the 12 volt line to the line that should be pulling the 12 volts to the audio deck and magically the damn cockpit light turned on….what the hell!! It must have completed to shorted circuit.

Thanks in advance for anything that can help on any of these issues.

On your 4 cyclinder I'm not sure but on the V-6 the coil is notorius for this kind of behavior. Have you checked it ?

Where exactly is the coil?