truck din't want to start..everything dead

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chefred112

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2010
Posts
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Location
Tracy, CA
Ram Year
2005 QC 2wd
Engine
392 Hemi
Here's a weird one for me. Going out to lunch, hopped in my truck, flipped the key and nothing...i was able to use key fob to unlock the door but after that the key fob didn't work, nor did the lock switch, no lights, no dash lights with the key in and turned..dead... so I go and pop the hood and decide to remove battery cable to hard restart everything, I also pulled the pcm fuse (23), then reinserted it, and reattached the batt cable. I knew there was power now because my windshield wipers did a single cycle when cable was reattached (note: battery is less than a month old)... so back incab, she fires up fine, go to lunch and come back ok.

Later in the afternoon I go out to my truck to get something and sure enough, key fob doesn't unlock so I knew it was dead again (no lights, no dash lights).. so I decided to pull the battery cable for a couple minutes and then reattach...still dead... earlier I had texted some ram buds to get their take on it and one of them said to replace/swap the pcm fuse for another, said that although it doesn't look like it burnt out, sometimes it 'wears' out. So I swap that 15 amp fuse with one for the pedal adjustment (i don't have a pedal that adjusts so it was a spare to me)... sure enough, it starts... I'm about to leave to go home so I'll see if this weirdness returns... truck has over 309K miles on it and I've never run into this before...interesting indeed :)
 
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chefred112

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2010
Posts
531
Reaction score
108
Location
Tracy, CA
Ram Year
2005 QC 2wd
Engine
392 Hemi
round 2...got off work, truck started fine and I went to gym...an hour later I'm walking back and as I'm hitting my key fob, my lights aren't blinking so here we go again..I unlock door and go to sit in driver seat and notice the red light on and hear a slight buzzing noise.. so 1st I decide to do what I did earlier, pull fuse 23 and disconnect battery... when I reconnect I know there's power because my wipers do a single cycle again... so truck starts and I make it home ok... after googling symptoms, alot say it's a bad battery..well, both the alternator and battery were replaced last month but I think I'm going to get them tested anyways...also, thinking out loud, I run a summit 20+% underdrive pulley, when I swapped in new alternator, I could not reuse the custom alt pulley because i need to get a shim for it to work, so I wonder if the alt isn't producing enough amperage and that's affecting it.... overall, it seems the system hangs and if I do the hard reset with batt cable and pcm fuse, it starts right up
 

brentwasham

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Apr 29, 2012
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50
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15
Location
San Antonio, TX
Ram Year
2013 Tradesman, metallic red with wheel-to-wheel black sidesteps and fender flares, factory wheels
Engine
3.6
I had a similar (but one time) experience on a hot day before leaving on vacation. Pulled into a 7-11 and nothing when I turn the key to leave. A few dash lights but no accessories (windows stuck down). New battery but tried jumping, called dealers, nobody could take it for the two weeks of my vacation so towed to the in-laws where there was a garage stall big enough for the wrecker to back it in. Then I googled the problem and came up with the reset idea so disconnected and re-connected battery cable when back from vacation and presto had an error read-out on the radio and it started up and has been running normally ever since, two weeks now. Initially thought it was a key-match-to-ignition switch problem because have a had a couple instances of same no-start symptoms which were remedied by turning FOB over and reinserting in ignition switch before turning -- didn't work this time. Wrecker driver thought maybe not in Park so nothing would fire, I could have forgot to rotate into park before shutting it off, but it still should have reset with key. Also, went over a tall curb on the left side just before the incident but nothing appears damaged. Any ideas? I've filed it away as a computer reset (software) issue after it got into some kind of weird mode, hopefully will not re-occur but at least I now know to disconnect battery cable to reset the system. If it recurs will use the scan tool to see if any fault codes are generated.
 
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