1) Lift hood. Cover drivers side battery with big beach towel.

2) On front of engine there is a big breather on 99 and up models (just a cover on 98.5) twist this cover or breather counter clockwise and remove.
Big VP gear behind breather/cover.

3) Get a flashlight and mirror and rotate engine in nuetral (I use one of the crankshaft dampner bolts and a breaker bar/socket) until keyway slot on VP gear is at 12:00 position. Put truck back in gear/parking brake/chock wheels with 4x4 wood. Use 1-1/16 or 27mm socket and remove VP44 gear and big lockwasher.

4) Remove intake horn / grid heaters 4 bolts and one big hose clamp on upper rubber sleeve. Lift grid heater/horn up and lay over on fuse box drivers fender.

5) Remove 3 bolts from big APPS housing. Lift housing, unplug only the gray electrical connector and unhook the harness from the plastic clamp. Lay APPS housing over on battery towel.

6) Get a steering wheel puller. Use the two longer bolts from the intake horn/grid heaters as puller bolts. Pull on big VP nut, it wont come out all the way, just break the press fit. Remove puller.

7) Remove 4 black 10mm screws holding the gold metal injector line clamp brackets to the intake manifold.

8) Remove 2 15mm screws holding rear engine lifting eye on engine. Lay eye over to the side.

9) 19mm or 3/4 wrench box end, loosen completely all injector line nuts going into head. #6 is a pain.

10) Remove main inlet fuel line into VP, and return line on VP, 19mm & 17mm. Let them hang there.

11) Using a open end 3/4 or 19mm, remove all the injector lines on back of VP that go to cylinder 1, 2, 4. Remove the complete injector line group from these cylinders and lay on a bench.

12) Loosen/remove the rest of the injector lines at back of VP, cylinders 3, 5, 6. Just push them back about 3". Leave them there. An offset 19mm or 3/4 open end would be really nice here.

13) Remove 1ea. 10mm bolt holding support bracket under rear end of VP to engine, the lowest bolt.

14) Remove VP wire harness. It has a cool slip out handle that unlocks it from the VP, easy to remove.

15) Using 3/8 ratchet - extensions - 15mm socket, remove 4ea. VP mount nuts. The back lower one is tough, but doable.

16) Carefully pull back on the VP. Mine was stuck, would not come out, I had to pry on it a bit. The whole time if you can, have one of your fingers on the VP shaft where the nut was. As the vp shaft is pulling out, keep you finger on the shaft and use it as a guide to keep from tweeking the gear and loosing the keyway down in the engine. My keeway was super tight on the VP shaft, but, just in case.

17) Lift out the VP. DONT SPIN THE VP SHAFT!!!

18) Lay the bad VP next to the good VP. Set the keyway on the new one exactly to the position the old one was at, i.e., 12:00, 10:30, etc.

19) Install your old rear support bracket on the new VP. My bolts were 10mm, but I see on the DTR some trucks have #50 Torx. Use all the new seals and gold color overflow valve that comes with the VP.

20) Reinstall the new VP with new O-ring (I lubed with grease along with lubing the shaft ). Line up VP shaft with gear, use flshlight/mirror, do it right the first time, push VP into place. Install the 4 nuts holding VP hand tight. Install big VP shaft nut/lockwasher and torque to 35 ft. lbs. Torque 4 nuts on studs down tight.

Reinstall everything else in reverse order. Bleed fuel system/injectors, truck should start up, after a few bumps and maybe freaking out that it wont start.

If it really does not start, you might have forgotten to connect an electrical harness, or you need to stop bleeding and tighten all you injector lines at the head now.

You might have to disconnect both batteries to clear old VP dead codes like I did.

Good luck.

 

Okay, just to update, I got my vp44 from MWFI.com...great delivery, great price, easy core. Also came with everything needed. I took my truck to the local Dodge dealer and they did it in about six hours (mechanic had to take it back out because he forgot to change the bracket on the back of the pump). Total cost from Dodge: $477 OTD. Hooked up my Vulcan tester and still get 15 at idle and 10 at WOT, 11 at 2400rpm (my usual crusing speed). I bought a electric gauge from Geno's and hope to have that installed in the next few weeks (too busy right now to get to it). I have a dummy light installed with a 5lb sensor mounted on the edge of my dash. It's been three weeks since I had the work done and I've noticed that my city mileage is worse, and my highway mileage is better....city is about 15.5 and hwy is 18.5. Used to be 16.5 and 18. Haven't been able to figure that one out yet. Anyway, I'm happy again and back to putting 4k miles amonth on my truck again....LOL. Thanks to everyone for their help and input.

BTW...can I put my gauge sending unit on the inlet of my vp44? I noticed that it's normally suggested on my filter cap for my year and on the vp44 on later models. Is there a specific reason for that? I have a ported banjo bolt and a 45* elbow fitting for the sending unit. Thanks.