Joseph H. Smith

Well I just did a 100,000 mile once over on my truck. The front and rear crank seals, gear cover and oil pan gaskets were leaking so I decided to replace them. When I started to dissasemble I found that the carrier bearing was bad, clutch bearing was bad, and pilot bearing. I also had the clutch disc redone and the springs tightened. I cleaned up the pressure plate and flywheel my self. The Chrysler manual tells you how to remove the oil pan gasket with engine in but the installation is with the engine removed. With the transmission off and starter plated off it says to remove the pan bolts lower pan and remove the oil tube bolts (4) and remove the pan to the rear which can be done with engine in. What they don't explain is that there is only enough room to get the open end wrench between the oil pan and block to get them off and that there is not enough room to raise oil tube from the bottom of the pan once the pan is back in place and then put and hold the bolts and tighten them. Thus removal instructions engine installed, installation instructions engine removed. I ended up getting a couple of bottle jacks and put them on the axles right under the engine mounts and loosened the mount bolts and jacked up the engine 2 to 3 inches which gave me just enough room to install the oil tube, gasket and 4 bolts without damaging the new oil pan gasket.

I found something out very interesting while I had the transmision off. The clutch housing is seperate from the transmission body which makes it easy. There is a measurement that you do to ensure that the transmission is inline with the crank. Maximum off center is .0015 of an inch. Mine was .0033 off. According to the book if it is off more than .0015 then you have to change the clutch housing or the starter-transmission adapter plate as they both align with dowel pins. BTW all my dowels and seats were tight so I suspect that most if not all of them are that way from the factory. But there is no way to determine which one is off without buying them both at $200.00 to $300.00 apiece. I called several trans places in the states and no one was familiar with this measurement and even all of the dodge dealers I called new nothing of it. One of the dealers on the west coast called dodge engineering and they were familiar with it and commented that if it was there truck and did not appear to be giving any trouble then they would run it like that and that even if I bought a new clutch housing and/or adapter plate there is no gaurantee that it would bring it into tolerance.

They sell off center dowels for gasoline engines but not for diesels. I worked with a machine shop for 3 weeks until we were able to fabricate a set of off center dowels that were able to bring the clutch housing to within .0007 of center. The vibration noise that you could only hear riding in the bed was gone.

2500 miles later I am now reading about the KDP. Can someone explain to me what it is or were I can get the info on it. I wish that I had had the info while I was doing all that at 100,000. Thanks, Joseph H. Smith, Indiana boy working for DOD in the country of Panama

infidel

Here's some good kdp info

http://www.piersdiesel.com/TechKDP.htm

http://www.turbodieselregister.com/f...threadid=35685