All these problems appear to be the fault of a vehicle that was stored, undriven.
A friend bought a Chevy Lumina minivan, that exhibits much of the same problems. Stumbling, poor idle, too fast or too slow, misfire etc.
He wanted a car that didn't have to be emission tested and nice shape for it's age.
It turned out to be, the car was traded by a lady who got the car from her late father. It wasn't driven for like, three years. Newer vehicles, just don't age very well. :sigh:

..... well I tried to swap neutral safety switches only to take the one off of my '92 and have it piss trans fluid. I dont remember my '93 doing that when I swapped switches but needless to say I'm not taking off the switch on my '96. I can try cleaning the connector though...

And far as I know Dieseljeep this vehicle wasn't stored for very long. The previous owner drove it up until it started acting too crazy for him to rely on.

I may just take it to a mechanic. I have some money now and I am sick of working on vehicles in Winter time.

Find a mechanic, that's just a little sharper on Mopars. Taking it to the dealership probably wouldn't work, as most dealers don't take 20 YO vehicles seriously and personel, familiar with a truck that old are retired by now. :sigh:

I wouldn't set foot in a dealership to save my life.

I showed the video to a mechanic, their diagnosis: water in the gas line...

...could it be that simple?

I'm going to get some help pushing it up to level ground where I can jack it up and have a look at that starter. With any luck that's the reason it won't crank anymore. I did start it more then a few times trying to get it home...

I'd check the solenoid (if it ain't hard to get at) before pushing it. If the solenoid is bad you may be able to start it by keying it to run and cranking it by manually bypassing the solenoid with a jumper cable or a wrench across the contact terminals.

Having worked at car dealerships since 1989, sometimes it's worth not having to deal with the aggravation.

My $400 1996 Grand Caravan is going right to the Dodge dealership come spring to fix a blend door issue for the passenger's side that wasn't cured with a blend door motor nor is anything sticking....the blend door motor is getting a stuttering voltage and not changing the heating position.

Screw it, I'll end up paying $300 or more to get it fixed, but I'll drink their coffee and have a pastry while they plug their machine in and take 20 minutes to diagnose something that I spent days working on.

Got an update for you guys. Took it to a mechanic a few days ago and they found the problem apparently. Wire with a damaged casing behind the alternator. So I've been driving it the past 2 days and it's been behaving itself.

Now I'm tackling the interior, swapped tachometers and now I have a working tach. Went to swap the stereo and... oh Jesus Lord help me...
http://s21.postimg.org/r53e32hkz/stereowires.jpg

They ran their own speaker wire, and it's shitty dollar store speaker wire!

The group of wires near the top center of the image... where the hell do those run to?! The ends are taped off so they're still active apparently.

There's wire caps and a piece of household extension cord in there, just, GAAAAAH!!!

Anybody here good with Dodge Dakota wiring? Because this is a cluster fuck

Is the stereo and speaker wiring good in your other dodge? If so perhaps you can use it as a reference.

Many times, you can go to a place like Auto-Zone. They have the prints on their computer and can possibly run off a copy for you.

That larger bundle is the original speaker wires. Just match them up by color (violet solid, violet w/stripe is one speaker, brown solid, brown stripe is another speaker, etc). I am sure they aren't connected on the other end if they ran new wires.

The smaller bundle to the right is the original power harness (power, switched power, illumination, etc). You should be able to figure out what's-what with a test light.

I see hackjobs like this on almost every car I buy, lol.

Okay if that's the original wire, shouldn't be much work to re connect it unless they butchered it. I mean I can get running new wire if you're putting in a high power stereo or want to add a subwoofer but why the hell would they run such thin gauge speaker wire?

Anyway I have a multimeter and a tone generator so today's gonna be fun...

EDIT: Right, so after thinking about it I decided to go with the wires that were already hooked up to the speakers. Reason being is I believe they were run for a reason. They weren't run for a high power system that's for sure. That makes me wonder if there was a fault with the original wiring, because whoever ran the new wires went through a fair bit if trouble to do it, so it wasn't just for shits and giggles.

That said I've soldered in new Chrysler stereo connectors and labeled the wires so I know where they run to. At some point I'll run my own 12 gauge wire, but for now the setup is working and a lot tidier.
http://s23.postimg.org/lc8oftfon/stereowires2.jpg

The presumed old speaker wires, I folded the ends over and put heat shrink tubing on them. Solder and shrink tubing all around... now there is something else you might notice in this picture, near the lower right corner.

There's a switch there and it's wired to the two wires that I believe were for the ashtray light or something like that. Someone rigged up a switch and there's a long red wire that goes through the firewall to I don't know where yet. What could this possibly be for?

Also that white piece of extension cord? Yeah that's the 12 volt constant power for the stereo. Where does it go? Right to the positive terminal on my battery! Not fused or anything. Should probably look into that, but my stereo has a built in fuse so I'm probably safe.

The stereo may be safe, but an unfused tap from the battery might burn the whole truck to the ground...

any wire coming off the battery should have a fuse, fairly close to the battery, if the wire rubs though somewhere and shorts...a car battery can put out a lot of current! i had a positive battery cable rub against the suspension once, melted the chassis grounds, vaporized the throttle cable, and set one of the rear suspension bushings on fire as we towed the car home.. and also pitted the rear axle bearings causing them to fail 5000 miles later on a long trip...the current went through the bearings since the car body was positive due to the short, and the drive train was still negative grounded through the negative cable for the starter motor.

Never underestimate the power of a battery, no matter what size.
Look what happened to the man carrying the E cigarette in his pocket. :D

Yeah maybe I'll put a fuse inline. Or get daring and try to find out why the hell they ran a wire for the stereo! Only guess is they had some bass heavy system that kept popping the stereo fuse.