KDP failure
 

Alright guys, I know this has been beat to death on here, but I was taking my "new to me" truck apart last night to tab the pin and found it already missing! Upon further inspection, I found that the pin had broken off a piece of the timing case. Now, alot of the other threads I've read have shown a chunk taken out of the top of the case, but my situation is a little different. The pin seems to have taken out the threaded boss for the upper bolt on the crank position sensor, but no other damage that I can see. The cover had a good dent in it, and you could see where the gasket was torn in that spot. The truck still runs great and has/had an oil leak, but other than that, I can't seem to find anything else wrong.

My question is, where else should I look for the case to be cracked? I found the rest of the threaded boss, but I didn't see the pin so I'm assuming it made its way into the oil pan. I'm going to do a little fishing, but if I can't find it, is there any harm in leaving it there? I've read you just abandon it since its impossible for the oil pickup to pull the pin through.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

MIke

You could put a magnet on the end of a small vacuum hose , then put a coat hanger in the hose to work around the pan to bring up .

From what I have read it would be a good idea to get a new pin, install it and tab it. The pin is needed to keep the gear housing precisely in place. Check the gear teeth for damage while you are in there. You can leave the old pin in the pan I'm sure, but out of curiosity I would try to fish it out with a flex magnet if I could get one in there. But that is me.

Thats the crazy part, the gears all look fine. The only damage I see, for now, is the threaded boss missing for the upper crank position sensor bolt. I'm hoping to be able to tack weld the rest of the stud to the cover so that the sensor will stay put and rtv the crap out of the cover where that bolt is supposed to go. I was mainly wodering if theres a common place for the housing to crack that I'm not seeing.

What I've seen many times is hairline crack on the back of the case where it joins the block.
Sometimes very hard to see.

From what I have seen this is the most common area. Grab a cold beverage, this video is not short.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Ci5l0wrqo

If you want to see the follow ons go here.
http://www.turbodieselregister.com/f...ome-video.html

Why not get a new cover while you have it all apart? New cover, crank seal, pin, tab, gasket, good to go!