Bought a 2000 Dodge Dakota 3.9 v6 at 131k miles. Since I've bought it in June of last year, I've put a little over 10k on it. In march of this year (2017) it started having a consistent misfire on cylinder 4. Kept replacing the spark plug and eventually the wire. It kept coming back. About two weeks ago it started spewing white smoke out of the exhaust that ended up being coolant. about three days ago it started overheating very consistently and very quickly after about 3 miles. It turns out that the head gasket is bad, and also the cylinder heads. Kinda pissed off considering I've had it for less than a year.

Okay, here goes. It began October '08 5 miles into a 200 mile trip. Check engine light comes on, engine misfiring. Return home, hook up diagnosticater, shows some gibberish about the secondary coil and that #2 cylinder is misfiring. Replaced plug, runs great.

A month or so later 35 miles into the return 200 mile trip, engine light, misfire--same crap. Go back to farm and diagnose, same results--coil gibberish and #2 misfire. Change plug, runs great through most of the rest of winter. Happened again in February. SS, DD.

Replace plug, runs great--for a week. Happens again. New plug, swapped coils to see if problem followed coil if and when it happens again. It didn't. Stayed with #2. Change plug again, runs great. Keep in mind that I have those new fangled PulseStar plugs at $25 a pop. Screw that, so I got a couple of Champions. It lasted about 20 miles. Come home, new plug again, runs great, back out of driveway and go ten feet and.......you guessed it, #2 misfire again.

What in hell is going on here? It's driving me nuts...and bankrupt!