Engine/Transmission (1994 - 1998) Interesting KDP Story

[DieselB59]

While doing a camshaft job on a customer's truck, I had a total shock upon pulling the front cover. Let's start from the beginning. The truck has 130K on it. At 100K, I did a KDP jig job on the truck. Now for the juicy part... . upon pulling the cover, the dowel was sitting on the ledge of the front case, next to the crankshaft gear. It had been ground down to half its size (half moon). It had to have let go mucho miles back and danced around for a while on or in front of a gear. When it got small enough, it dropped down and was stuck in some oil mess on the ledge inside the case. This is not a customer who changes his oil on a regular basis, so muck is inside the case. Good for him in this case. So, I pulled out the setscrew, tapped in a new dowel, and put in the KDP screw once again. We figured that the best thing was to have the dowel for alignment. Additionally, all the 10mm bolts inside the case were in need of a tightening. I told the customer if he isn't a gambler, he should start gambling heavily, because his luck is gold!

 

[ddutil]

Chris, wich year was the truck, another 1997? Dan

 

[DieselB59]

Twas indeed a 1997. A 3500. By the way, wow on the power in doing the cam in this truck. It's a PDR cam. Wow again.

 

[SRehberg]

I read your story about the dowel pin coming out and being reduced in size from bouncing around in the timing case. The way I understand the story, the KDP jig had been used prior to your pulling the timing cover. Was the pin out already when the jig was used the first time, thereby giving the impression the pin hadn't moved? That guy was LUCKY!

 

[R.ebel]

KDP

Chris,

If I understand you right this truck had the KDP jig fix done at 100K and 30K later the KDP still fell out?

 

[Andy Redmond]

No, the pin had to have fallen out prior to the jig/ set screw operation being performed. Or as Chris stated, possibly it had loosened enough to have been ground down over time and the remaining dowel tip was allowed to fall out. The jig's drill will not go all the way to the stop if the dowel is protruding (or prodruding very much). Thus alerting the tech to pull the cover and drive the pin back in. .

 

[DieselB59]

The pin was still way too big to fall out. I took pics of this when I took the cam out. The pin HAD to fall out way before we did the KDP fix, and the guy was so lucky that it hadn't gotten in between the crank and cam gears as it was sitting literally a 16th of an inch away from the meshing of the two. Looking at the KDP fix, the setscrew borders on a feeler gauge depth from the dowel bore. There's no way the pin can pass the screw. It completely stops it from passing. Good design by CPFF. From the wear that occurred to the pin, I'd estimate that it probably fell out somewhere around the 80K mark and just kept on machining itself possibly in the front of one of the gears until it finally got to the size where it would pass through the front of the gears to the bottom of the case. This is a hardened steel dowel, and from the material that was removed, the time had to be considerable.