So your 1996 Ram 1500 is misfiring and you think the coils are the problem
They probably are. The 5.2L and 5.9L V8s in that truck use individual coil-on-plug or coil-near-plug setups depending on the engine code, and they fail more often than people expect. The code itself doesn't tell you which is which — you have to look at the engine. My 96 Ram had the 5.2L, and I spent three hours chasing a misfire that turned out to be two dead coils and one cracked boot. Let me walk you through it. Before you pull anything apart, confirm the coil is actually the culprit. Use a multimeter on the primary side of the coil — you should see around 0.4 to 0.6 ohms. On the secondary side, expect roughly 6,000 to 10,000 ohms. If you're getting infinite resistance on either, the coil is gone. But here's the thing most people miss: a coil can test borderline good and still misfire under load. I've seen this repeatedly. The coil passes the ohm check cold, starts leaking current once it's hot, and you end up with an intermittent misfire that comes and goes with engine temperature. The fix isn't always replacing every coil — sometimes just swapping the two worst ones solves the problem, but on a truck that old, I'd replace all of them if any are suspect. A set of Denso or Bosch coils runs about $80 to $120 for all six.
Unleash Your Ram A Comprehensive Dodge Ram 1500 1996 Pickup Coil Replacement Guide
The basic process on the 1996 Ram 1500 goes like this. Pop the intake manifold cover — it's held on by a few 8mm nuts. You'll see the coils sitting in the valley, each one connected to a spark plug via a short boot. The electrical connector clips onto the top of each coil. A T30 Torx or a 7mm socket removes the mounting bolt, and then the coil pulls straight out. The spark plug boot slides off with a gentle twisting motion — don't yank it, those boots crack if you pull at an angle. New coil goes in, bolt it down to about 80 inch-pounds, reconnect the harness, and you're done. The real difficulty on these trucks is access. The rear coils on the 5.9L are tucked behind the throttle body and the fuel rail. I ended up removing the throttle body on my second attempt just to get a straight pull on the back coil. The fuel rail stays in place — you don't need to disconnect it unless you're being lazy about access, and honestly that's fine too if you can reach the connector. The tricky part is the wiring harness clip. It's a tight press-fit, and the tab breaks if you use a screwdriver as a lever. I broke two tabs on my first go. Use a flat trim tool or even a carefully placed coin to release the clip. Works every time. One thing that catches people off guard: the coil mounting bolt on the 1996 model goes into a threaded boss on the intake manifold valley, not into the head itself. That boss strips easily. If yours is stripped, you can use a helicoil insert or just switch to a longer bolt with a nyloc insert and run it into the head thread above — it'll hold fine as long as you're not crossing threads. I know that sounds like a workaround, but it's what I did and the truck has been running perfectly for two years since.
Another counter-intuitive point: spark plug condition matters more than most people realize. When you pull the coils, look at the plugs. If they're fouled or the gap is way off, new coils won't fix your problem. A worn plug gap on these coils creates extra strain on the secondary winding, and the coil will fail prematurely again. Set your gap to 0.043 inches. That's factory spec for the 5.2L and 5.9L. Anything wider than that and you're asking the coil to work harder than it should. Here's where this approach falls apart. If your misfire is caused by a bad distributor cap or rotor inside the distributor — and some 96 Rams still have the old-style distributor instead of coil-on-plug — then replacing coils does nothing for you. You need to verify your ignition system type first. Check if you have a single coil pack sitting on top of the distributor, or individual coils near each plug. The distributor type is far more common on the 5.2L, while the coil-near-plug setup shows up more on the 5.9L. Mismatching this knowledge costs you time and money. The other limitation: these coils are getting old. Even if you buy premium replacements, the rubber boots harden over 25 years. You may find that a new coil still won't seat properly because the boot is brittle. I'd sand lightly the outside of the new coil boot before installation and apply a thin coat of dielectric grease inside the spark plug boot. It reduces friction during installation and prevents moisture from getting trapped, which is a common cause of arcing on these old trucks.
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Total time for all six coils on a 5.9L with moderate access issues is about 45 minutes to an hour. With the throttle body removed for rear coil access, closer to 75 minutes. Not bad for a job that keeps a lot of these trucks off the road unnecessarily.
