I have an on going problem that I need to resolve

I have a 1998 Dodge 1500 360 4x4 199,000 miles
to hte best of my knowledge the motor is original.
The person I bought it from gave me over 9800 in receipts over the last 6 years in other repairs, but no motor work.

Motor has plenty of power. At least for a dodge
I have had this truck for about a year and this has been happening for hte last 3 months.

It all started when I lost power on a return home trip. Mechanic said it all went back to the exhaust peing plugged. Cat converter etc.
The problem is this;
It started when under load, Atv in the bed or pulling the boat, that when giving gas to pass or kcik down a gear it would ping. More gas, more pinging. UNLESS I hit it hard enough to get over 3,000 rpm. Anything UNDER 3,000 and hit passing gear or more gas then a steady pace it would ping. Kick it hard enough to go hit passing gear AND get over 3,000 it would not ping.
Only way to not have this happen was to either run two bottles of Octane boost of run premium.
Now its is doing this with NO LOAD. But still if I kick past 3,000 rpm it does not ping.

WTF can this be?
Ignition wires, plugs, cap etc has all been changed with no success.
One mechanic is saying the computer needs to be remapped? Since I drove it so long with all the fault codes a few months back.
Some say it could be carbon build up since I do so many short trips. Work is only 2 miles. I used ot let it idle in the winter time also But never had this problem with my Suburban with 199,000 miles on it.

Either the EGR system is clogged or inoperative(stops pinging on part throttle) or you have carbon build up in the cylinders due to oil leakage in the intake manifold plenum(there is a TSb on this). Both should be checked.

PM CheckmateF1 from the board or email him, (Eric) at garrettracing1 (@) a0l , c0m.

He is very knowledgeable about that Truck as he had the same truck, and is now a Merc mechanic.

INSPECT, I cannot find info out on the egr. According to the service manual only the desiels have them. I do not see any egr vavle anywhere
as for the oil leakage this truck has never smoked at all.
Wouldn't excess oil leakage cause it to smoke?

Thanks Brian, I will send a pm to him

Some trucks don't use it, yours must be one. The oil leakage will not cause smoke as the amount leaking is small. It causes carbon build up in the cylinder and results in predetonation.

Here ya go:

http://www.pecuniary.com/newsletters/Dodge-Recall.html

I believe that these engines are notorious for having a intake manifold gasket leak.

Was the caty. conv. replaced yet? I had to do mine at 80k mi. Had power probs also. 97 2500 360

Like Cord say's , I bet it is the intake manifold gasket. I think there is a TSB for this.

http://www.alldata.com/TSB/17/981778CZ.html
http://www.pecuniary.com/newsletters/Dodge-Recall.html
http://dodgeram.info/tsb/2000/09-05-00.htm
http://www.bionicdodge.com/Download/...%20Install.pdf