I was cruising down the road minding my own in 6th going about 65 and the truck started stuttering and wouldn't except throttle so I whipped into the 1st gas station. I had half a tank so I figured maybe there was some trash in the fuel. I shut it off and opened the drain valve on the bottom of the fuel canister to let and "trash" drain out. Went to start it back up and it ran for about 10 seconds and then died again. Wouldn't start again for nothing. Went and got a fuel filter and swapped those out. The old one was dirty so we figured that was the problem. However, before replacing the fuel filter with the lid to the cannister off we cycled the key on and off a couple of times to see if it would fill up with diesel. Not very much came out so in order to get the truck started we had to actually use the diesel pump to fill the canister up. After a couple of seconds the truck sputtered back to life and got on down the road fine for about 5 miles. It didn't seem like it had the power it was supposed to. After 5 or so miles it sputtered out and died again. Started it back up and started to "limp" it home. Ran fine, never sputtered, you could rev it up, no problems. So I proceeded to drive it about and hour and a half to the lake without a problem. Next morning go get in it to go home, get out on the highway cruising 65-70 with the cruise on and it started sputtering and stalled out. Took it a minute spinning over and it fired back up and ran fine for the 1.5 hr drive home. Sitting in stop and go traffic doing 45 or so it stared sputtering and blowing blue smoke like it wanted to die so I would just take it out of gear and let it come back to idle and it never die thank goodness. Sorry for such a long post but I wanted you guys to know the full story. It is not consistent, but I am pretty positive it wasn't bad fuel, that it was the lift pump. Does this sound right? I am going to drop it off at the dealership in the morning so I wanted to try and figure out possible causes of this problem.

 

Yes, classic lift pump dying.

Hopefully you caught it before it could cause any damage to the VP44.

Both should be covered under warranty, unless you're over the 100K mark.



phox

 

no I only have 58k. Does dodge require the lift pump to be completely gone in order to warranty it? It is hit and miss right now but I want it replaced before it goes completely.

 

Yes, they need it to fail the flow test to replace it.

Hopefully the planets are aligned right and it chooses to be miss when they test it.


phox

 

I hope so. The guys I take it too are pretty good about stuff so hopefully they will go ahead with it. If it fails completely then aren't they shootin theirself in the foot b/c they will have to replace the injector pump as well?

 

If they aren't aware you could give them a nice reminder that if they don't replace the $150 dollar lift pump,
($300 if you had to pay them for it plus labor),
they'll be replacing it and the $900 injector pump.
($1,500 if you had to pay for it with labor).


phox

 

lol I will do that. I wonder why this thing gave up at an early age? My poor cummins has been in the shop the past two weeks. First an oil leak, now this. Thank god the chicks dig it or I think I would get rid of it....

 

My VP44 died with only 4,000 miles on the odometer.

3 months into a $35,000 investment only to shell out $1,500 (gotta love the warranty).

Been fine ever since though, still on the original lift pump, 44,000 miles now.


phox

 

well thanks for your help it shall go back to the dodge house first thing in the morning.