Greetings all first post here.
I'm working on my 1990 D250. I bought the truck after it had been backed into and while I had all the front body parts off I decided to check on the killer dowel pin. I removed the timing cover and found the dowel pin was missing entirely. I also can see the cam and crank gear have been replaced along with the timing housing. I found receipts inside the truck mentioning these parts and the labor done to replace them so obviously the pin fell out and everything was fixed (the truck has been running fine as far as I can tell). However on close inspection of the crank gear I found this,


For some strange reason whoever put the new crank gear on ground down the key to make it narrower and now the gear is not lined up exactly on the shaft.

Will this cause any problems or can I leave it alone? If I need to pull the crank gear off and install a new key is it possible to do that with the crank in the engine? Any tips on pullers I could use for such a task?

Thanks much for any help.

 

that is not a woodruff key. it is a dowel pin. it got sheared in half when the killer dowel pin broke the original crank and cam gears. I do not know why they did not replace the pin in the crankshaft and the killer dowel pin. it looks like the gear on the crankshaft is 1 or 2 degrees retarded. the camshaft will be retarded half that. retarding the camshaft will inhance your mid and top end power. as long as the ve injection pump is timed to the crankshaft, I do not think you`ll see any change in engine performance if you go to all the trouble to remove the crank gear (cummins says to split the gear to remove it) and put in a new pin and gear. I hear some guys have removed the gear with a modified gear puller but it is highly doubtfull that it would be time efficient. I would just leave it alone, put the cover back on, and drive the truck.

 

Thanks for the reply. I talked to a friend who works at a cummins dealer and he recommended I reinstall the crank gear correctly and offered to loan me the puller cummins makes to do it. Time is not really an issue so at this point my plan is to pretty much redo everything the previous mechanic did for my own piece of mind since so far everything I can see he did has been done wrong.

Yesterday I pulled the cam and am glad I did because I found this,

And this,

That is the pushrod for the #3 exhaust valve. I have no idea how it got bent but it has a small round dent on the edge of the cup so it obviously slipped too far down and let the edge of the cup under the ball at some point. It was the only bent pushrod I found. Should I do a compression check to see if I have a bent valve?

It was hard to get a good pic of the cam bearing but it has some noticeable dings and scrapes. I'm not sure if they were there from last time or if I caused them but either way a new bearing is cheap so I plan to replace it if I can.

I'm betting I'll have to completely remove the timing housing to get the tool on to pull the crank gear but I'm going to wait till I see the tool to make sure. If I don't have to I'll probably just retorque all the housing bolts with some blue locktite and call it good. Also better check the injection timing. I ordered a factory service manual to help with that. And everything else.