Well I decided to have the dealer replace the computer as they pretty well confirmed my original 4-months of diagnosis / educated guess. They (nor could I) were able to reproduce the problem at idle. When the tack began acting up, I would immediately pull over and as soon as the truck came to a stop, the tach would begin acting normal. Dealer told me the same thing. Dealer agreed to replace the computer under a condition that they would allocate additional diagnosis time at no cost to cover the margin of cost vs markup for the computer; well verbally anyways.

Anyways, dealer replaced it and the truck now has roughly 3 days / 500 problem free miles (need to find some wood to knock on!) but I will not make my final conclusion until another week. Now I am just keeping an eye on my vp44 to ensure I did not have two separate problems, I have about 6k until that goes out of warranty (136K theory).

Bent valves hit the nail on the head; the ECM was chosen by the tech and “Star line” because everything is hard-wired to the ECM. What are your thoughts on “Star line?” Are they worth anything?

 

Being a shade tree mechanic I have never dealt with Chrysler Star Line super-techs, but it makes economic sense to have them available to help out the dealerships. I rather spend money on shop manuals to do the work myself.