99 Dodge RAM popping sound at idle

[SOLVED] 99 Dodge RAM popping sound at idle

Hey Everyone,

Having this popping sound occur on my truck at idle that's driving me crazy because I can't figure out how to troubleshoot the issue. I just replaced the plenum plate with an aftermarket "Hughes" plate to resolve a common issue found on these trucks with oil leaking into the intake manifold up to the throttle body. While I had everything apart I figured I'd do a tune up as it was easy to access the distributor cap/rotor. So I replaced all the wires, plugs, the distributor cap and the rotor. I decided not to replace the ignition coil as that looks to be working fine but I'm not opposed to replacing it if there's some evidence to support that this popping issue is coming from that. Since doing all this work I've now developed this popping sound that occurs at idle and even while revving the engine although it's not as frequent as it is at idle. I should also mention that I used NGK double platinum plugs for this tune up and insured they were set to the correct gap before installing them. However, the service manual for this truck calls for champion plugs but they weren't in stock during my trip to the auto parts store so NGK it was.

I want to say the popping sound is more pronounced on the passenger side of the engine but it's still hard to tell if it's coming from the plugs, the distributor cap, or even the front pipe. I'll include vimeo or youtube links of what I'm experiencing and hopefully someone can guide me on what I should check to eliminate what could be causing this problem. I should also mention that I re-checked all the boots to make sure they're snapped into the plug as well as the other end on the distributor cap. You may notice from the video that there are different colored wires as well. The mixture in wires is due to a red set of cables that were cheaply made. A few of the boots would not set on the plugs and the metal insert inside the boot would go further up the wire. So when I asked for another set to remove the bad wires I ended up getting black cables. I thought of just doing all the wires and making them the black cables but I wasn't sure if that would matter.

Any help I can get on what I should check to diagnose this weird problem will be greatly appreciated. I don't believe this is a muffler issue as it just appeared to start occurring after I did the tune up but anything is possible. Thanks in advance for reading this and hopefully helping me out.

Video Links below:

vimeo.com/177951051 - part 1

vimeo.com/177951180 - part 2

Your links don't work.

I'm gonna put money on you screwed up firing order. Also ditch the platinum plugs for copper. Platinum has too much resistance for factory ignition and these trucks hate it

dapepper9 said:

Your links don't work.

I'm gonna put money on you screwed up firing order. Also ditch the platinum plugs for copper. Platinum has too much resistance for factory ignition and these trucks hate it

Click to expand...

Thanks dapepper for responding. I'd like to think I have the firing order correct as I did each wire one at a time but anything is possible. I'll trace each one to their respective cylinder and see if I can find a mistake. As for the copper vs Platinum plugs I wasn't aware there is a common flaw there. I'll see about changing those last if all else fails.

if you copy and paste the link (not including "part 1" or "part 2") they won't show up for you? I just tested the links on another system and they came up fine.

Thanks again for your input.

Disregard the links not working. Didn't notice i had accidentally copied the hyphen as well.

Watched em and definitely convinced it's mixed up plug wires. Passenger side probably 2 and 4 is my bet. I dig the same thing during my header install. That'll scare the **** outta ya when it's own header and it sounds like a random gunshot lol

dapepper9 said:

Disregard the links not working. Didn't notice i had accidentally copied the hyphen as well.

Watched em and definitely convinced it's mixed up plug wires. Passenger side probably 2 and 4 is my bet. I dig the same thing during my header install. That'll scare the **** outta ya when it's own header and it sounds like a random gunshot lol

Click to expand...

Lol the popping sound is definitely concerning. Well hopefully it's something that simple and I just have a cable mixed up. I'm going to take a look at it sometime today and trace each one. Just in case all the cables go where they are suppose to do you have anywhere else I should check? I made sure I installed the distributor cap in the same way as the previous cap was installed, and the same goes for the rotor.

Someone else mentioned to me that I should check the timing of the flywheel with a timing gun and adjust accordingly. I'm not too familiar with this process but I'm sure I can figure something out and research how it's done assuming that will help resolve my problem if its worth investing the time into troubleshooting. I'll report back with the layout of the cables and will go from there.

Thanks

Timing is pcm controlled, timing lights don't work on these trucks. Only other thing i could think of would be late ignition from the platinum plugs or wire crossing. But I'm positive you have mixed wires lol

dapepper9 said:

Timing is pcm controlled, timing lights don't work on these trucks. Only other thing i could think of would be late ignition from the platinum plugs or wire crossing. But I'm positive you have mixed wires lol

Click to expand...

Your positivity would be correct sir, I had the boots for cylinders 2 and 4 backwards. Thanks for suggesting I retrace the wires and figure out where the mix up was.

I did one wire at a time and still found a way to mix up 2 cylinders, let that be a lesson to someone else tackling a tuneup lol. Thanks again!

2 and 4 can be easy to mix up if you take the boots off even once. 1 and 3 are the same way