Misfire and bad cat on 97 ram 1500

Asked by Mrhtrnr Jul 08, 2019 at 03:39 PM about the 1997 Dodge RAM 1500 Laramie SLT Club Cab 4WD

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

So we noticed an issue after we bought the
truck mostly and only sometimes when it
was rainy out the truck would buck and carry
on check engine light would flash here and
there despite knowing it most likely needed
plugs and wires we kept driving it. Couple
months down the road we ran it out of gas
and my mother brought me a gas can only
to quickly find out there was some kerosene
mixed in with the gas. We just kept diluting it
with more and more fresh gas. Another 2
months go by and we decide to clean the
plugs and replace them and replaces the 1
wire that had broke while removing them.
Issue just got worse now a week later there
is a rattling under the truck (assuming a bad
cat) truck has absolutely no power cannot
get it to do more than 40mph and if we step
on it just dogs out even worse but
regardless we continuosly and consistently
lose power until we pull over around 30mph
now. Truck doesn't even have enough power
to shift out of 2nd. Obviously we need to fix
the rigged up wires but will punching the cat
out fix our power issue? We replaced the
TPS already and truck ran decent until it got
hot again and back to the same issue no
power what so ever.. where do we start.
Don't have much $ to invest and just need
some advice

2 Answers

Also want to note that we commonly have to add oil on occasion no burning oil smell though and prior to issues with the gas/kerosene mix we didn't have much of a problem with lack of power.

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