Jerry makes a good point. I believe the mod comes from everyone who has ever had the misfortune of inheriting an old engine with a leaky timing cover seal and have to go through a lot of difficult work to fix it, including removing the balancer, and dropping the oil pan, creating the possibility of causing another leak there. So after all of those headaches, we decide that we are not ever going through that again! This frustration muddies up our judgement, in terms of what Jerry has brought up. That is, you probably will never have to do it again until the engine is worn out, requiring us to pull it out of the truck and tear it completely down on an engine stand, making the original design no so much of a problem.
Carl.
