For the last 3 years, my Dakota has been relegated to a backup vehicle. When I started commuting 100 miles per day, it became obvious my truck wasn’t the vehicle for that. I drive it about once a month to haul something. Otherwise, it sits in the driveway.
My wife’s car broke down a couple weeks ago and I suggested she go get the truck and drive it around town for the day, but it wouldn’t start. I thought it was a low battery charge as it would crank but very slowly, so I pulled out the charger and let it charge for a few hours.
After it charged, I was finally able to get it to start, but just barely. After two minutes of babying it, slowly warming up the engine, it finally started running right. It was floundering badly for those couple minutes. Its done this a few times since last summer, but usually just stumbled a bit when it first started up.
Do I just need to do some routine maintenance on the vehicle or is this a symptom of something more dire? Thanks.