Flashing light, misfiring

[DCPHOENIX]

Driving back from deer hunting tonight, punched the gas to get around a granny doing 30 on a 60 road.

As soon as the revs got up around 5000, engine light flashed on and the whole engine started shaking. I backed off the power, light turned off and engine stopped shaking. Hit the gas again (hard) to replicate and same thing. Drove normally for the next ten minutes and made it back home without incident.

First time this has happened. 2022 with 66,000. Out of warranty of course. Aside from a battery, I’ve been relatively trouble free.

What am I in for?

Had a quick look on google and found all sorts of horror stories…

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[ShadowsPapa]

Driving back from deer hunting tonight, punched the gas to get around a granny doing 30 on a 60 road.

As soon as the revs got up around 5000, engine light flashed on and the whole engine started shaking. I backed off the power, light turned off and engine stopped shaking. Hit the gas again (hard) to replicate and same thing. Drove normally for the next ten minutes and made it back home without incident.

First time this has happened. 2022 with 66,000. Out of warranty of course. Aside from a battery, I’ve been relatively trouble free.

What am I in for?

Had a quick look on google and found all sorts of horror stories…

There may be a code stored - get a code reader or find a parts store that will connect and read any possible codes. Trouble is, after so many restarts, it may be cleared so you have to act fairly quickly on some things.

 

[Maximus Gladius]

I have found that when the engine check light has self healed and the dealership plugs in their reader, they can’t see the code and say “there’s no stored code” and send you off to monitor it.
I’ve used THINKCAR for years as a reader and it reads those codes Chrysler says isn’t there. More specifically now, I use this reader :
https://mythinkcar.com/products/thinkdiag

This reader will identify stored codes from the factory you didn’t know were there.

Don’t always jump to the worst case scenario and ‘you need a new engine’, maybe at the end of the day you do but start with what could be a fouled or malfunctioned spark plug, coil or injector and go from there. My first engine was a cam fix and all the bits that go with that but my second engine, the misfire proved to be a fouled/malfuntioned spark plug at 60k kms. I changed out all 6 and no issues since mid summer when I did that.

I ohm tested my plugs to see if the misfired #5 plug was bad. Each spark plug was reading 6-8 ohms and #5 was reading 5 ohms.

 

[DCPHOENIX]

Going to grab myself a reader this morning.

Hoping it’s something simple like plugs. I can do that.

$4500 repair? Hello new F150 lol

 

[Maximus Gladius]

Going to grab myself a reader this morning.

Hoping it’s something simple like plugs. I can do that.

$4500 repair? Hello new F150 lol

I’m not sure if every reader can access Chrysler’s fire wall and tell you what you want to know. Some of us have needed the “gateway bypass cable” (others can chime in here about this). In my case the ThinkCar diag didn’t need the cable but the upgraded one I have now does.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I’m not sure if every reader can access Chrysler’s fire wall and tell you what you want to know. Some of us have needed the “gateway bypass cable” (others can chime in here about this). In my case the ThinkCar diag didn’t need the cable but the upgraded one I have now does.

Reading is doable, clearing codes and so on, making other changes, not so much.

I have found that when the engine check light has self healed and the dealership plugs in their reader, they can’t see the code and say “there’s no stored code” and send you off to monitor it.
I’ve used THINKCAR for years as a reader and it reads those codes Chrysler says isn’t there

Some codes do clear, and are gone. Some are there but the MIL is off.
It's not a matter of a reader not being able to read, it's that they typically look for the codes that are there and pop up. Few look for deeper issues, which does require knowing where to dig, look for freeze frames and so on.
JSCAN, AlfaOBD and some of the cheap or free software can do it.
But there are times when the MIL goes out and there are just plain no codes to find, no matter how deep or hard you dig. So I can't blame a dealer for saying "there's nothing there".
I ran into that with my hot restart misfire. If you absolutely didn't catch it in the act, there was literally nothing there after the MIL went out and you did xx restarts. It cleaned itself up.
I was lucky, I kept JSCAN connected, caught it in the act, grabbed freeze frames, took screen shots and so on - because the next day, there would be ZIP, 0, nothing to find.
And - when I went in for service, I got there 15 minutes early, shut it off, and then when their doors opened - BINGO, it went into the goofy hot start misfire and caught it in the act. No, the MIL didn't set and stay on! But - I left it running, no restarts to start the countdown to clearing things, and they plugged in and saw what I saw.

Can't always blame the dealer. There truly are some things, like kids or cats, you have to catch them in the act, and not do multiple cold starts, which MAY start the timer to clearing things if it doesn't happen again right away.

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