[immattj]

Ron, imo, the crank & cam position sensors were a good place to start throwing parts at this.

I have read a ton of posts on the Dakota sites about these gen2s shutting down & going into a crank-but-no-start-mode, but unfortunately it is tough to troubleshoot something when it is working (as yours is MOST of the time). A lot of these gen2 Dakotas in crank-but-no-start-mode (both intermittent & terminal) seem to come down to buggy PCMs, and that doesn't seem to be totally uncommon for them. I recall a post by a guy whose Dak would shut down on him & restart after a period of time. He started wiggling & pushing on the PCM connectors & he thought he had diagnosed it to a loose receptacle on one of the connectors, but as things went on, it turned out to be a loose pin in the PCM itself. (If you want, I'll find that thread & post a link for you.)

If your issue ever devolves from intermittent to terminal, there are some checks that you could do that would either point at the PCM or away from the PCM; however, I realize that you don't want to wait for your problem to become terminal.

In the mean time, you might think about sending your PCM out to a facility that advertises that they can bench check it & diagnose it. If you do wind up taking your PCM out, be sure & disconnect the negative battery cable before you unhook it.

 

[immattj]

Ron, the PCM is the computer in your Dak, and I am going to step out on the limb and say there probably won't be much you will be able to ascertain or verify with a visual. As far as the labor/cost to remove it, it might take 5 minutes. Probably less.. Unhook the negative battery cable first (you don't want to create a problem with your PCM if one doesn't exist) and then unhook the 3 connectors and then go from there (I cannot remember the actual fasteners that are involved in holding it, but trust me, it should take about a minute or so).

As far as places that claim that they can diagnose (& repair if required), when I had a similar experience with mine (except I was lucky & every time mine shot craps it was in my driveway) and when it finally became terminal I was able to follow a seqence that pointed at the PCM. I watched some youtubes looking for recommendations and someone on one of them put in a plug for a place called SIA Electronics in Tilden, Il. To be clear, I am not putting in a plug for them, just relating my own personal experience. I called them on the phone and I wound up sending them my PCM. Although they did not meet their advertised turn time, they did diagnose and repair the issue & I have been good so far (fingers always crossed). That was in 2018. You could always check with the guys at the shop where you have been having the work (so far) done, and see if they can give advice on electronic repair shops that do PCMs.

 

[immattj]

Matt, Jester,

Understood regarding the value of a visual PCM inspection. I just thought I’d locate the PCM and look for obvious corrosion etc. Also, someone on another forum suggested checking for corrosion and bad grounding.

There used to be a pretty experienced member here (RalphP) who used to recommend (first unhooking your negative battery cable!) and then unplugging and plugging your PCM connectors a few times. (As a matter of fact I recently passed that on to someone who had a FREQUENT random stalling going on, and it worked.) You could do that, & while you were doing that you could clean all the pins with some contact cleaner, but you wouldn't really know anything for sure. You'd still be driving during rush hour with your fingers crossed.. I was once reading a thread on this subject, and I'll see if I can track it down and if I can I'll paste a link.

I like the idea of sending the existing PCM to have it diagnosed and possibly repaired. If a fault in the PCM is identified at least then I will know for sure what the problem is, and if it is repaired or replaced, I can feel confident driving the truck in traffic again.

Regards,

That was where I was going with that suggestion. I don't know anything at all about testing PCMs, but maybe there is something they can do on the bench to force the condition to duplicate or maybe if they take the top or bottom off they might see something on the PCB with an almost sort of loose solder joint or something. That might be worth discussing with the facility before you send it out. In one of my previous lives I was an airline mechanic & I did a few tours through the electric shop (it was a bid area by seniority, and as I was certainly no electrician, I usually got low tech jobs) and a friend of mine who also worked there showed me his favorite technique which was to find a unit on the shelf (whatever it was) that was basically working okay and no faults could be duplicated. That way he could spend the night doing nothing & still put out a "serviceable" unit when the shift was over. So where I was going with that seemingly pointless story is: that I suppose that a PCM that works MOST of the time might present a repair facility with an issue that could not be diagnosed when it was working. I don't know. As I typed, that would be worth discussing with them.

 

[immattj]

Here is an interesting PCM thread with the link to another PCM thread within it.

02 Dakota PCM

I am new here, so please bear with me. We have a 2002 5.9l quadcab. We bought it used 2 years ago. Love the truck, Power for me, small enough for the wife. Her daily driver. 2years ago, about 4 months after we brought it, the PCM crashed. Had it rebuilt, all good. Now, almost 2 years to...

www.dakota-durango.com

This is the thread that I was originally talking about:

Basics: Contact Enhancer vs Dielectric Grease vs ?

So there is this Dodge van guy on another forum who started a thread on this topic on 07-01-2010, 09:31 PM And he came back 4.5 years later to update it to share what he learned in the interim. Bottom line is this for us with 15-20 year old vehicles: Our electrical contacts are oxidizing...

www.dakota-durango.com