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I'm going to refer to my VP44 post for the first part here. So you should be to this point if you have done all the work on the link above. So we'll continue to remove the tappet cover and replace the tappet cover gasket on the driver side of the engine. On my truck, the leak is very minor but I want to get this resolved before it gets worse. Being I'm already replacing a VP44 it just a good time to do the tappet cover gasket and fix that oil leak. You need to remove the two 15mm bolts for the rear hoist ring. This is so you can gain access to the #6 injection line nut at the rear of the head. Now you need to remove the two 10mm bolts holding the 3,5,6 injection rails. This is so you can remove the 3,5,6 from the intake. Now there is a 8mm bolt holding the dipstick tube. This caught me off guard so don't forget to remove this 8mm bolt for the dipstick tube. Now loosen the 3,5,6 injection line from the head. Lift the 3,5,6 injection lines from the engine. Place them somewhere clean. Take the two 10mm bolts out holding the fuel filter housing. Then lay the fuel filter over out of the way. This might require removing the fuel lines if you still have hard lines yet. Now remove the three 10mm bolts holding the ECM to the tappet cover. Lay it over as well toward the driver side fender. Now you need to remove the 10mm bolt on the rear most holding the return line. Then there are three 16mm standoffs bolts you need to remove. Then three 10mm bolts. You may need to lightly pry on the cover to break the seal loose from the block. Be careful not to drop or break the rubber seal into the engine while doing this. It should lift out. Now take some brake cleaner and a rag and wash down the tappet cover and clean the edge. I use a gasket tack for the edge of the cover. I had to quickly put the gasket on so it would tack it together to prevent it from slipping off. Make sure the large tab is in the front and the flat side of the tab is point outwards. The thicker side should be towards the engine. Also watch for the FRONT mark on the tappet cover. Install. Make sure to put the right bolt in the right spots. I did not use any sealants on the face of the gasket. I highly do not suggest using RTV or gasket sealant on the mating face of the tappet cover gasket. This will most likely cause issues in the future. Just reverse the process to assemble. View full Cummins article

Hey guys, need a lil help here. So i had to do some serious tear down of the truck to get to my tappet cover. I found that it was leaking back when i did my rear main crank seal last time i was underneath the truck. Needless to say to get to the tappet cover you have to pull the injection pump and lines 1,2, and 4 so that you can get the vp44 out of the way. I was very careful when i was removing the vp44 to make sure that I didnt drop the key down the timing cover. I aligned the key-way with the TDC mark on the top of the timing cover so that wouldnt happen. Removed the pump and went about my business. On re-installation i put the pump back in made sure everything was aligned and bolted the vp44 down they way you are supposed to. needless to say after I started it up i pop a p0216. I didn't move the gear around while it was disassembled either. Anybody have any ideas if I should pull the pump again and verify if things are lined up that way or should I go about pulling the timing cover to check and see whats going on? BTW this pump was good before I began the work. Any help would be appreciated.

I'm going to refer to my VP44 post for the first part here. So you should be to this point if you have done all the work on the link above. So we'll continue to remove the tappet cover and replace the tappet cover gasket on the driver side of the engine. On my truck, the leak is very minor but I want to get this resolved before it gets worse. Being I'm already replacing a VP44 it just a good time to do the tappet cover gasket and fix that oil leak. You need to remove the two 15mm bolts for the rear hoist ring. This is so you can gain access to the #6 injection line nut at the rear of the head. Now you need to remove the two 10mm bolts holding the 3,5,6 injection rails. This is so you can remove the 3,5,6 from the intake. Now there is a 8mm bolt holding the dipstick tube. This caught me off guard so don't forget to remove this 8mm bolt for the dipstick tube. Now loosen the 3,5,6 injection line from the head. Lift the 3,5,6 injection lines from the engine. Place them somewhere clean. Take the two 10mm bolts out holding the fuel filter housing. Then lay the fuel filter over out of the way. This might require removing the fuel lines if you still have hard lines yet. Now remove the three 10mm bolts holding the ECM to the tappet cover. Lay it over as well toward the driver side fender. Now you need to remove the 10mm bolt on the rear most holding the return line. Then there are three 16mm standoffs bolts you need to remove. Then three 10mm bolts. You may need to lightly pry on the cover to break the seal loose from the block. Be careful not to drop or break the rubber seal into the engine while doing this. It should lift out. Now take some brake cleaner and a rag and wash down the tappet cover and clean the edge. I use a gasket tack for the edge of the cover. I had to quickly put the gasket on so it would tack it together to prevent it from slipping off. Make sure the large tab is in the front and the flat side of the tab is point outwards. The thicker side should be towards the engine. Also watch for the FRONT mark on the tappet cover. Install. Make sure to put the right bolt in the right spots. I did not use any sealants on the face of the gasket. I highly suggest against using RTV or gasket sealant on the mating face of the tappet cover gasket. This will most likely cause issues in the future. No sealants are required. Just reverse the process to assemble.

I finally got time to change out my leaking(severely that is)tappet cover gasket. I just made a 1600 mile round trip and went thru near 5 quarts of oil. While in the past I have removed every thing form the drivers side of the engine at different time, it was the first time I ever had to remove all of them at once. Pretty much stripped everything on the drives side to gain good access to the block. The only thing I left on was the fuel lines for 3, 4, and 6. Just did not want to mess with the lines at the head. They did get in the way a little but not to bad. It was also the first time I dd the VP by myself. Of everything I dealt with, that worried me the most. It all went back together fine. Primed the fuel system and got her running in about 5 minutes. Took her for a test drive and pulled into a parking lot and found one leaking fuel line at the head. A quick turn of the wrench, problem solved. The beautiful thing was no puddle of oil like I have been seeing for a while now. When got the tappet cover off I was surprised to see how bad of condition it was in. It was completely hard and had cracks in it all the way around. When I took it off the biggest piece that came off was about 6" long. The rest of it came off in 1" to 2" pieces. I probably spent no more than 1 hour removing the cover, the gasket, cleaning it up, installing the new gasket, and bolting the tappet cover back on out of the 2 days I worked on it. For now it was all worth it. Keeping my fingers crossed I installed it well and they will be no problems until this one goes out. I did have 2 glitches with the install. #1 When I took the filter canister our I disconnected the fuel line and wedged the fuel line up in the fire wall somewhere. Evidently I knocked it loose, then tool a break and ate some lunch. When I came back out and started back to work I dropped a bolt. Thats when I noticed the fuel line on the ground dribbling fuel. Got it back up and zipped tied it up. Since the ground was wet from the morning rain I just did not see it. I could not tell you why I did not smell it. I noticed a fair amount of wetness this morning and noticed it was green. Lit a paper towel and put in the small puddle and the puddle caught on fire and burned for an hour . After getting the truck up and running it looks like I lost about 6 or 7 gallons of diesel. I bring this up not for the cost of the diesel but you just dont need to pour it on the ground. Its just not a good thing to do. The other problem is now my Scan Gauge does not work. It was working fine before but is dead as a door nail now. Not sure what is going on there, and I ran out of time today to look into it. I am open to suggestions though. Any way I want to thank all of you here who continue to give me confidence to tackle projects like this. I have by far done more things to this vehicle than any I have owned before. Yall have allowed me to learn and pass it on to others for there benefit. The chicken man and his truck say THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!! I am no longer lubricating everything I drive on.

oil leak coming from behind plastic cover. I suspect stamped-metal side cover is leaking. Any thoughts? Can i buy gasket at NAPA(cummins part number?) or need to special order from dealer?I thank you in advance for your feedback

Hello! I need some help. I had a bad oil leak on my 2001 Dodge Ram 3500. I've changed the pushrod cover gasket and put everything back as it was. After that, as I was little to lazy to start it proper way with bleeding injector lines ... I just used ether. Vehicle started and I thought, it was ok ... and it is while it's idling. Problem starts when press the gas. Huge white smoke is comming out of the pipe. Seams to me, like it smells like a diesel ... so all I can think of ... timing got screwed up. Anybody has any idea how to set the timing in VP44? I just put back everything as it was ... but there was no smoke before the procedure.Thanks

Ok fellas! I'm replacing the side tappit cover gasket! I'm 3/4 of the way into tear down an like a dummy I forgot to take pictures! I'm fixing to start taking some pictures of what I have done so far! An I will take pictures of reassembly if you want me to post them I will! I will write a summary on the teardown and reassembly if anyone else ever has to do this!

After finding absolutely nothing on the internet for what is under that cover and lots of people wondering including myself, I put Smokeythedodge to the task of getting some pics since he has that 24V just sitting out there. He came through in a big way taking a lot of pics. You can see the pushrods going down right into the top of the lifter/tappet. You can see that some lifters are up and some are down because some are on the cam lobe. Also gives you a sense of why you have to jam dowel rods into the lifters and pull them all up if you want to pull the cam out, otherwise the lifters that are down would hit each lobe of the cam. Thanks again Smokey!