I purchased this truck from a mechanic relative and have had nothing but issues. He had rebuilt the trans, along replacing other things.
2 weeks we had to have it back to change the alternator, then they said it was a catalytic converter issue so we had cleaned that, replaced the rotors and brakes because they were bad
then when driving it, and push the gas and it sputters and backfires and dies, codes said fuel sensor so we rolaced that and the wires/plugs.
and it is still sputtering and backfiring, seems to be a compression issue maybe, I have no clues anymore. Evekusg said this year was always an issue. I have sunk so much into this at this point. Any ideas?

 

Model year doesn’t matter if the truck wasn’t taken care of (as it sounds like the case here). 2002 was no more a sore thumb compared to any other year of this generation truck.

Besides, after a certain point, major repairs have to be made on these trucks. They aren’t young bucks, anymore.

My ‘03 gave me about 278,550 miles on the original engine before it got a new one. It runs great now.

More details about your truck, please. Plugs and wires tells me a v6 is under the hood. You probably need an ignition coil, too, but it won’t matter if the engine isn’t running on all cylinders. You should have DTCs present as well. Post them.

 

Ii bought this for my son and his wife. He is in the Narional Guard and was at drills when I got it for them. Now he s home but he is a CO at the prison so I and to ask so this is from his wife


t's a v8 it DOES have a miss. That's y we spent the whole day at the mechanic last time bc we replaced the valve.. still had a miss...replaced ALL the plugs... still had a miss.. replaced all the coils n n cylinder that connect to the plugs bc it don't have wires for each plug it has individual coils n boots on each plug... still has a miss. That's y we know it's internal bc replaced all that n still has miss so severe u can literally remove a spark plug it's number 3 plug i think... n it makes no difference. It's should cause a miss when u unplug one. The miss is always there bc it's internal I can't remember if it's plug 2 or 3.. either way it's internal.. right now technically it's a 7 cylinder right now n the problem is internal bc the new plug n coils should have fixed the miss... it didnt

 

377,000 on my original engine and trans. Very easy maintenance and they just keep going.

 

You haven't done any meaningful diagnostics.

-Backfiring indicates a possible timing problem.

-??? Exactly what codes were you getting ?

-Did you check the compression ?

 

Base engine concern?
Like roller followers that have worn out rollers and pins
An intake manifold vacuum leak
Post the actual codes, do the actual pinpoint tests for those codes
Get a second opinion

 

I'm trying to figure out what issue would change from an alternator being the problem into "it's your catalytic converter"?