Well Guy's I finally decided after a couple of years of worrying about the darn Kdp pin that I would finally put my thought of disaster to rest permanently. Since I was in need of a new radiator this gave me the motivation to go a little further and pull it apart. I yanked the cover and to my astonishment the pin was gone! I could not believe that went through all of that worrying about the disaster that the little piece of steel could cause!Well I began to look around and saw that someone else had been in there before! The inside of the case looked as if the pin had come loose and battered the inside of the case but never actually cracked through,then finally coming to rest between one of the gears and the sheet metal case. The cover actually was ballooned in the shape of,yea you guessed it a KDP.
The moral of the story here Guy's if your truck has not been done to your knowledge you should save yourself some worry and just go ahead and do it!
You might be pleasantly surprised! Oh and the truck when I bought it had a tad over 100k so the killer can and will bight you and it can happen at any time! Sorry Guy's wrongf Forum. moderator please move thanks...

 

Unfortunatly KDP's fall out in this forum too. At least your story has a happy ending :-)

 

Well that was pretty lucky. Several years ago, I took the gear cover off a first gen to replace the front seal. I removed all the bolts and as I pulled the cover away from the engine, a beat-up KDP fell on the floor. No real damage except for some scrapes and scars. Who knows- another few miles and that thing probably would have been ejected through the gear housing. How's that for luck?

 

what is a kdp pin

 

A disaster waiting to happen! It's a dowel pin that Cummins used to hold parts together during assembly of engines of this era,the only problem is this particular dowel pin has a tendency to destroy the timing case! The pin works it's way out and falls into the timing gears and 9 out of ten times causes serious carnage! The typical damage caused by this tiny pin is the destruction of the timing gear case and to replace that case the cam needs to be removed and so on......
Needless to say I Have lost a bit of sleep thinking the little bastide would work it's way out and leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere!!
The moral of the story is if you have a 12 valve or any other Cummins that has this issue,get it done before it costs you significant cash and or down time!! Either way it's one of the few problem's that this seller engine has. I think it's a small flaw that can very easily be taken care of but if a guy drag's his feet all will say is it will hurt and hurt bad!!

 

Is there a listing of the years that are likely to have this problem?

 

i think it's any 12 valve..........

 

The 24 valves are also vulnerable all the way through '02. There has been at least one that has had major repairs because of it. Less likely the later it is but can still happen.

 

Yes, apparently they started phasing in the revised gear housing in the 1998.5 model year, but some trucks still got the problem housing for several years after. If I bought any pre-common rail truck, I would be removing the gear cover for a little inspection.

 

I have a 98.5 24 valve 2 wd 175000 miles on it should I get it look at and if so how do I fix to this problem

 

Jkrauss, the kdp is short for "killer dowel pin", which is forum speak for the dowel pin that can/will/might never work loose in the timing cover. If you search KDP you will discover a wealth of info and pics re: this item. Luck

Kurt

 

I need to replace my VP and while im going to be in that area Im also going to take a look at the KDP and see what I can do to it.

 

What's the torque spec for the bolts on the crank pulley?

 

92 Lb/Ft.

You do know you don't have to take the front cover off to do a VP?

 

Does anybody have a pic of what that area looks like with the "revised" housing? Is the dowel in a blind hole now or did they install some kind of retainer like the "fix"?