[curtis c.]

I just posted the other day about my 4bt with a broken camshaft. A bolt had came loose out of the gear case & broken 1 tooth off the crank gear. The kdp is still in place. Looking more closely I noticed the engine had not jumped time from the missing tooth. The only damage to the gears are the crank gear & 2 small gears on right side of engine, no marks on cam gear. This leads me to believe that the engine has probably ran a while with the missing tooth. I talked to the service managers & some mechanics that work on 4bt's & they said broken cams are the most common failure. If 6bt's are the same engine with 2 more cyls.,it would lead me to believe that they would experience even more cam failures since the cam is longer. I haven't heard of 6bt's having this problem. Could the problem be that the 4bt does not have a harmonic balancer? If I put a 6b harmonic balancer on, fix the kdp, & loctite the gear case bolts will broken cams be a thing of the past?

 

[sdstriper]

If you take time to visit any of the Dodge diesel forums and ask this same question I think you will find that the dowel pin or case bolts are a very common problem. Broken cams, damaged gear cases etc. I think your plans for a balancer, loctite (red) and tab that dowel pin are good ideas. And anyone not familar with these issues should take a few minutes and search a couple of those sites, search "killer dowel pin". Also, not all of the case bolts are that easy to get to, behind gears etc. Now that you have your engine apart you will have an excellent opportunity to loctite them.