vader86

Driving to school today and the car started stumbling badly at about 60mph at cruise. At a redlight it would run fine at less than say, half throttle, and didnt stumble at all. If I gave it more, it'd stumble. Made it to school and thought that some plug wire or dist. wire had come loose, so I made sure all were tight.

This afternoon, cranked the car and revved it up to around 3.5K in Park, no problems. Driving home at a stoplight the engine died as I was coasting to stop. Cranks fine, but when shifted to D, engine dies immediately. Crank again, put in R, engine runs fine and car will move out of the road. Tried shifting to D, car died. Kept cranking and as soon as it goes to D, engine dies. Manage to get it running enough to get someplace out of the street, and as before, it'll run great in N or P and R but as soon as it goes to D, it dies. Dark now so cant check anything out, not sober enough anyway

What is this? something wrong in the tranny, TC? some electrical connector? or is it the fuel pump?

brian84

id have to take a stab at saying the tq converter is stuck in lock up when its trying to be put in drive. that or its dead completely, wich might allow engine to just rev free from spinning the tranny like in neutral. that sounds weird. could have something to do with the load the engine recieves when car is in drive, possibly fuel preassure could do this and maby the timing could be super way off. how many miles do you think are on the timing chain? they stretch out over time and allow cam to advance and retard at its own will. verry frustrating to figure out.

have you tried yanking the shifter back to any other lower gears, like 3rd 2md or first?

hippy

IAC, but your symptoms from D and R would seem to negate that. Can you keep the car running with a little throttle pressure in D? You'd have to 2 foot it, 1 on brake other on accelerator.

vader86

When I finally got it to run in D, after letting it cool a minute and cussing it the whole time, I had to hold the throttle down w/one foot and brake with the other and put it in 2, and it made it out of the road. It stumbled horribly and backfired, then eventually died again.

So symptoms appear anytime its in forward gears, putting it in 1, 2, D, or OD....all end up the same.

williammackean

I had this problem on my '87 Firechicken. It turned out that the down shift linkage was loose. That was causing the converter to stay locked.

My mechanic told me that stomping on the gas (to downshift) pulls a downshift cable that locks the converter somehow for greater acceleration. This was 10 years ago, so my memory may be a bit rusty. I have had mt's since.

I think there was a horrid vaccuum leak, too. Might have been unrelated.

trackman44

If you have a DVM hook up the red terminal to battery + and the negative lead to terminal F on the ALDL connector. Shift to D. If you have battery voltage reading check either that the ECM is pulling TCC wire to ground or the wire itself is touching ground. Does it die with your foot on the brake pedal? ( when you shift to D?) Check the brake pedal interupt switch. It's supposed to be open when you press the brake pedal. I have the circuit diagram for an 84 ( 86 should be similar ). If you want it i'll send it to you via e-mail.

mseven

I would start w/all the basic stuff, check TPS for dead spots, fuel pressure, plug condition, alternater output, etc.

Keystring

Exact same thing happened to me with an 86 Dodge diplomat I used to have.

Got the car from my nephew. Started it up and ran fine.
On the way home it started to run rough and finally died in the driveway. Could start it back up but everytime I put it in 'D' it died.

Turned out to be a cracked distributor cap.

cv67

With size 14 feet?

vader86

If you know where in the manual the diagram is, I'd like to know

Or please send it.

vader86

Plugs are fine, dist cap has no visible cracks, alternator output is perfect as I can tell.

engle1147

Rev the engine up in "N" keep the RPMs up and slam the selector it into drive. If it doesn't stall ~ follow-up with torque converter lockout switch trouble shooting.

BADDUCK

The "get a bigger hammer" approach.

hippy

Pull codes and ohm your injectors. The R to D thing has me a little puzzled but this would be my first two things to check.

vader86

You and me both, there are no codes....that was the first thing I checked.

hippy

Ohm your injectors for shts and giggles then. I dropped one one day about 8 years ago and it took my gtech to figure it out. I pulled plug wires til my 0-60 time quit sucking. When I hit the bad cylinder it quit hitting 10 second 60 mph times.

trackman44

PM sent and e-mail of TCC circuit diagram sent also.