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96 Grand Caravan Blowing Ignition Coils

I have a 96 Dodge Grand Caravan 3.3L V6 w/ 140K miles. Engine suddenly began running rough, check engine light came on, and vehicle stalled after another minute or so. Mechanic replaced Cam Sensor and Ignition Coil. Vehicle started up and ran fine for about five miles and then same thing happened. Based on code 351, Ignition Coil again replaced and vehicle again started and ran fine for about five miles before happening a third time. Code again shows 351. What is causing this?

Reply to
cincirollers
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I'd bet crank sensor. It's not bad practice to replace both cam and crank sensor as a set. You see what happens is over time the fine wiring in the sensors cracks. Then when they heat up, the wires are spread apart and the sensor stops working. When one of them goes the other is close to going too.

A decent mechanic would have used a scope on all of the engine sensors and the ignition coil, when the engine was hot, before replacing any of them. Sounds like your mechanic is a "parts changer" I'll bet your first coil had nothing wrong with it.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

Your "mechanic" is an idiot.

P0351 doesn't mean the coil is no good. It means the PCM has detected a problem in the #1 coil circuit. It "could" be caused by a bad coil, but there are other possibilities such as wiring problems or even the PCM. Find somebody competent and have it checked properly.

A crank sensor will not cause this.

Reply to
bllsht

The ignition coil is supplied 12 volts by the ASD relay to ignition coil primary circuit 1-2 and 3.The PCM controls all 3 primary circuits by grounding each circuit. The problem could have been a bad coil, but it sounds as if the first pot shot was already thrown at it and didn't fix it. The second shot taking was so far off it is silly. The crank sensor will not effect this circuit. You need to find another person to work on this vehicle or go by your self a DVO meter and fix it your self. Since the vehicle is running we know that there is 12v coming from the ASD circuit feeding the primary 2 and 3 side therefore we need to look for a bad wire/terminal from the coil gray wire at the coil connector to the PCM connector pin #11. if this wire is not open circuit from point A to point B then we know the PCM is bad and needs to be replaced. If you had a scan tool you could activate the Primary 1 circuit and the PCM would make and break the ground. such an easy test to make and diagnose. If the problem was intermittent it may be hard to diagnose. Since your vehicle is a hard fault and running bad at the time of the test it should have been diagnosed in 15 min.

Glenn Beasley Chrysler Tech

Reply to
maxpower

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