My Dakota is a 2.5l 4 cyl with manual transmission, A/C, Throttle Body Carb. Only 82K original miles.
While driving ans shifting through the gears, mainly between 1st & 2 or 2nd & 3rd the engine just simplies quits running. Sometimes it will restart immediatly and other times it takes up to 10 minutes before it will fire. This happened six months ago and I replaced the Throtle Positioning Switch. That worked up until 3 weeks ago and it started doing the same thing. Again I replaced the TPS to no avail. It appeared that there was no fuel flow so I also replaced the fuel filter and put in a new fuel pump. The proplem still existed. I have taken apart all the electrical plug connectors and cleaned them with electronic contact cleaner. I have checked the distributor and the electronmic pickups and all seem to be ok. Sometimes it will run for days with no issues and other times it is a constant problem. Stumped, don’t no what to check next. Can’t trust driving it anywhere for fear of quiting and eventually not starting again. Got any ideas that I can check?
I suspect that the engine movement during shifting causes an electrical failure.
Check the engine to body ground strap. It is between the firewall and the intake manufold on your engine. There is also a big ground lug on the end of the cylinder head (driver’s side). The wire comes loose in the lug, so make sure it is tight.
You might try wiggling the wires on the engine at idle and see if you can reproduce the problem.