Paul Lewthwaite

Okay so I just bought a 98 dodge ram 1500 360 5.9L V8 engine with the 46RE Automatic Transmission.. and I was driving over to a buddys it ran perfectly fine. When I went home for some odd reason it shifts gears way way to early. I noticed it when i was going down a dirt road going 80km/h and it was sitting at about 1500rpm with no power. Even when I floor it it would do nothing it wouldn't down shift to give me power or nothing. I'd slow right down give it gas and it would accelerate but when I got up to I'd say 2 or 3rd gear it would just start to upshift to top gear and I'd have no power. I need some ideas to what could be the problem. The transmission was changed out with a new one 3 years ago. (Or so the guy says) even when I got home and put it into park it idled high. It would fluctuate from normal rpm (750ish) to nearly 2k it wouldnt fluctuate super bad but slowly. Any ideas? I dont need the wife to get mad that I wasted money on a broken truck.

maybe368

I don't know too much about the "newer"Cummins, but, I believe that it could be the crank position sensor is bad or not adjusted correctly, or the throttle position sensor needs adjustment or replacement. The true experts will chime in soon...Mark

Fordzilla

Ummm, the OP said this a Dodge 1500, and mentioned "giving it gas" so I'm wondering exactly what kind of truck and engine we're attempting to diagnose......Ben

maybe368

Good point, doesn't say anything about diesel. As far as giving it the gas goes, I think that does apply to mashing the go pedal, regardless of the true fuel. We shouldn't take correctness too far. I still call R-134a "freon"...Mark

Fordzilla

Hah!...I wish I had all the real Freon™ that ever got blown into the atmosphere on horns at football games...I could be the next Ebay billionaire......Ben

maybe368

Years ago, in the '90s when they banned freon, I went about telling people to stock up because of the ban. Half of them didn't believe it and the other half didn't care. I went to Autone and bought a 30 pounder for about 20 bucks. I still have it and wish that I had bought 50 of them...Mark

Paul Lewthwaite

Yeah my bad I forgot to post in my forum that it's a 360 5.9L V8. It has the 46RE transmission

AlpineRAM

Well, first thing is that you check for codes, there are a lot of codes that will not trigger a check engine light.

The fluctuating and high idle sound like a idle air solenoid to me- get a can of throttle body cleaner and clean the throttle body and the idle air passages.

Do also check the throttle position sensor and the wiring. The trans shifting depends a lot on the TPS for the 3-4 and lockup control.