Figured I'd better get around to tabbing my KDP. Since it's my birthday, and I didn't have anything that I needed to do, I pulled the front cover off to find my KDP had came out over 1/4". I wonder how much longer I had! Not that it matters now. I beat it back in and tabbed it.

Don't delay! Do yours now if you haven't already. Mine only has 100K on the clock, and was all stock untill the last 5000 miles. This could've ruined my day tomorrow, or 5 years down the road. You never know.

BTW, it took right at 4 hours from start to finish with us not being in a hurry. The only things I did different from the instructions was I disconnected the upper radiator hose to get more room. The TST instructions were pretty good, and really didn't skip much. I replaced the serpentine belt at the same time because it had a little checking on it. Probably didn't need to, but I was right there, so what's another $30 right? About half of the cover bolts were barely more than finger tight, and most of the bolts inside of the cover were pretty loose as well. For this reason, I'd reccomend doing the complete job rather than the drill and tap from the side with a jig.

 

If you were to come back again in 50k miles the bolts would be loose again. That's the big reason for the dowel pins, the bolt holes have a lot of slop and are tightened against soft aluminum. Engine vibration eventually wears the aluminum under the bolt head.

 

I'm hoping that the red loc-tite will help a bit with that.

 

So an inspection needs to be done every 50K then? Re-tighten and/or replace suspect bolts?

 

I guess it's possible a bolt could back out enough to cause damage but I've personally never heard of it happening.
It's not that the bolt turns that causes it to become loose, it's the metal wearing out under the bolt head. If you remove a case bolt you'll clearly see evidence of this.
If you think about it there's nuts and bolts all over your truck that could come loose.
Where does it end checking to make sure they're tight especially if you have to take things apart to check?