MY girlfriend has a 1996 Dodge intrepid 3.5L. 158,000 miles on her.
Now when she bought this car last year ran great had lots of power. Now we have ran into the problem of of a check engine light. Its brought up 2 codes for the longest time still can not figure out whats wrong.

1.; first code is bank one running to rich. we have replaced 2 out of the four o2 sensors (passenger side back right at Y pipe and the drivers side front on the manifold).

2. second code something about multiple miss fire. (check engine light blinks while driving)

Now i have replace plugs and wires on this car helps a little but not much. Also when driving in the rain when driving into a puddle the belt sequels (i think) for a second then stops. there also was one time that with a heavy down pour the car started to miss real bad. i was told this could be because of a short in the crank sensor.

I was also told the the computer could be a cause of all this due to the little capacitor inside explode or leak on to the computer.

Let me a remind you im not a big fan of dodge especially the amount of room this car does have under the hood. in my option i would rather work on any GM vehical.

Please help me
Thanks,
Brad

 

oh yeah, Dodge Intrepid... yumm yumm... biggest speeding ticket I ever had, he-he. $640. Georgia.

is that distributor engine? awfully sounds like bad distributor cap..

 

Haha yeah that one heck of a ticket. it would be a fun car if it didnt hesitate so bad taking off. Any ways nope this car has the coil packs.

i also forgot to mention i have replaced the mass air flow sensor only because it use to die when you slow down. Its has not done this since we replaced the battery.

 

ive thought about cleaning parts of the pletnum to clean out passage ways. Sometime had hard starting problems. Started up with a little push on the pedal. ive change the fuel filter last year. These are just some more things that just popped in my head that i have done or was thinking about doing.

Could a EGR valve cause these problems to???

 

well, it's 96, so it has OBD2 scan port, so might be a bright idea to go scan for error codes. otherwise, does still sound like humidity issue, a sensor sensitive to humidity.
I simply clean MAF or MAP sensors with cleaner routinely. For 96, she's all due general tune up.
That Dodge was 2000, white color. I am glad he didn't catch me when I was going 125 on 70. That would have been jail time. I was only 95 on 70. Local sheriff boy, those are the worst, one big family and huge profit maker for them. No point to contest it if locak judge in boondocks is prolly uncle or father in law anyway.

 

i did have the car scanned but cant remember the exact codes. i think i will get it re scanned and post the codes on here.

 

yeah, that's where you start, brother.

 

ok so just went Auto zone and got the caR Scanned again and here are the codes: P0172 (fuel trim bank one condition)
P0300 Cylinder misfire detected-random cylinders. the guy at auto zone told me that there is a possibilty that the coil packs could be an issue with the misfire.

 

Coil packs and O2 sensor(s).

 

I've been leaning more towards the o2 sensor but never really gave the coil packs a thought. Maybe soom Lucus injector cleaner.

 

so c=when it comes to the O2 sensor can some one explain to me the location of the up stream and down stream o2 sensor. (very confusing)

 

Upstream = Before cat converter
Downstream = After cat converter

 

see... how nice it is..

whilst the O2 sensor code is quite obvious, the chaotic misfiring is more troublesome. means - it's coming from somewhere else. considering that coil packs are very very reliable, it sort of guides towards ECM issue.
Here's cheap suggestion first. get to your coil packs. Remove one connector at a time, spray clean with electrical parts cleaner, same Autozone, re-pack with dielectric grease, Autozone again, and reconnect. If it fixed it - amen. If not - further investigation necessary. Might be simple stuff, like cranck or cam shafts position sensors. Might be ECM.

 

Just a thought from experience. Although it does sound like moisture problem, if it still runs the same during dry times, it might be smart to have fuel pressure tested while it's acting up. Had one that gave me misfire, lean mixture codes etc, and it was all a result of low fuel pressure when pump got warmed up. Ran good in winter weather.

 

Another thought from experience. Found an intermittent miss during rain to be caused from a crack in coil pack.