1998 Dodge Dakota Distributor

Welcome to the insanity.

The only dist. with the alignment slot for the bolt, is the 4 cyl. I am assuming that is your engine. Can you compare the old dist. to the new one? Is the orientation of the pick up exactly the same on both of them? There may be a device that is used to keep the pick up from rotating. This might be called a octane adjuster. If they are not the same, your new dist. could be running retarded. That is what your systems sound like to me.

If you do not have the old distributer to compare to, try this. put the dist. back in and fire it up. Remove the hold down bolt, and slowly rotate the dist in each direction until the engine picks up speed and begins to sound correctly again. use a crayon, or marker to mark the location of the dist. Now shut it off and set the timing marks to TDC and remove the dist cap and see if the rotor aligns now with #1. The ignition timing MUST be set correctly. If you need to notch the slot in the dist hold down, do it. If you need to grind off that slot, what else can you do?

Is the dist. driven from the camshaft, or the crankshaft? If driven by the camshaft, and the timing belt has jumped, you are going to get exactly the systems you describe. Are you able to check the camshaft timing?

Let me know. Good luck.

Now that I think about it, before it starting messing up bad it would skip one little skip when I hit a bump in the road, once the truck got warmed up. Could it have anything to do with my cadalitic converter? Cause there is somthing raddling around inside of it. Someone else told me it could be some kind of sencer on the trani, made with a magnet. I dont know? Why doesent my roter button point to the #1 cyl when I put it on TDC on the compression stroke? When I turn the engine to line it up The mark on the hb is about 1/4 turn counter clockwise away from the 0 mark. Thanks for your help its been about 6 months sence it broke down!!!

A cat-con may clog and get restrictive, but will not give you the issues you have.

As far as a sensor that might be bad, get the on board computer read. an of the many sensors that might be bad will set a code in the computer's memory.

The issue with the distributer could be two things that I can think of. One would be the gear on the distributer not aligned to the slotted oil pump drive. the cure for that is to put the distributer into the engine where the rotor will align with the correct cap position. At this position, it will not drop all of the way down. Just tap the starter with the distributer in as far as it will go a few times. Once the distributer aligns with the oil pump drive tang, it should drop right in.

The other thought is that the electronic controlled engines must use a very advanced pick up position because as the engine tries to advance the timing, it can never advance the spark before the pick up is triggered. All the computer can do is retard more or less. For that reason the timing of the pick up relative to the rotor-cap will look off. I have not seen your amount of misalignment, but I believe you are just facing an oil pump alignment issue.

Sorry for the delay, my boss thinks the computer is only for business use.

get old dist and compare the drive ie the bottom part are they the same ?

remove caps from both and compare where rotor is when the drive is in the same position.

does the rotor point in the same direction ?

please report back

could you also put photos of both dist insides on here and then photos of both drives on here thanks

If it is the 4 cyl, it only has a "screwdriver" type drive tang.

ah ha is it the sort that has an offset blade blade drive ?

reason i ask i have come across such a system where when the dist was removed the drive shaft just below it came up with the distributor and then drop back but as the drive had a screw gear and would drop back into a different position so when you put the distributor back the timing would be way out, you could either rotate distrubtor to allow for this or remover the inner drive and reinsert correctly ( this is fun )

if it were me i would just rotate dist to match timing

Look at the mounting area for the thing. It may not be possible to just rotate the darn thing. Good thought about the intermediate shaft dropping back in the wrong spot. That may be the way out of this, If the OP is still here.

For some reason, the picture of the dist is not showing. Try clicking on the next>> icon till the mounting flange shows up.

Seeing that you have the six cylinder model and not the four, get the shop manual and follow the directions for re-timing the distributor.

1. Remove the distributor and align the rotor with the notch which is on the module cover.

2. with the number one piston at top dead center and the valves closed, install the distributor, making sure the rotor doesn't shift position.

3. If this doesn't work, call a mechanic at the local Dodge Dealership., even my manual recommends this.

Allen