2000 T&C 3.8, 111,000 miles. Starts fine, still has plenty of power however upon hard acceleration from a stoplight it bucks and backfires as if 2 plug wires were crossed. No check engine light and no pending codes. If I'm on the freeway and the RPM's are up I can give it full throttle and it wont do it. It seems to backfire more severely when its under the most load. The backfiring seems to be a popping under the hood, not out the pipe. Sounds like when I had the distributor off 180 degress on my '56 ******. I haven't done any recent to work to it. My wife just came back from a 400 mile road trip and now I notice it. The GPS did show that she it 87mph at one point. I already talked to her about that though. Thanks

 

after the backfire, the engine still runs?
it doesn't shut off?

for a start, 2 possible causes for that.
lean mixture and spark jumping due to weak and old spark cables.

renewing spark plug cables would be the first thing I would do. of course, assuming you changed spark plugs regularly and they meet chrysler requirements.

 

I'm just now getting to check the reponses and you were right. There was no CEL but a pending code showed misfire #2. Pulled the plug and it was fine. Turned the lights off in the garage and started it up but didn't see any arcing until I put my hand by the coil. The #5 plugwirewas cracked and the coil terminal was all carboned up. I replaced that wire and all is fine. I don't know why it showed misfire on #2 tho. Thanks.

 

glad it helped.

if you ever find out why cyl. no 2 was at fault, please share.

 

the ignition type of these minivans is called a waste spark ignition so 1 coil fires 2 cyl, one +polarity the other -polarity, while one is in compression stroke the other is in exhaust stroke. the spark that happens in the exhaust stroke is a wasted spark hence the name. #2 pairs to #5, #1 pairs to #4, and #6 to #3. so when one cyl has an issue it generally causes issues in the other. So while #2 was shorting to ground the #5 was experiencing voltage issues caused by #2. the pcm monitors ignition voltage feedback. so it mistakenly thought #5 was the problem but in reality it was a side effect of the problem.