Did you say there was a gap between the converter and the flexplate that you can't lose by pushing the converter forward? Not a good sign IMHO.

I saw this on a fresh Hemi in the shop where my engine was being built. The engine had a bunch of dyno time to dial in the EFI and was fine when delivered to the customer. As it turned out when the install was done the snout on the converter was interfering with the the register in the crank. This caused a gap between the converter and the flexplate which the guy who installed the engine thought was no big deal and just "sucked 'er in" with the bolts. It wiped out the thrust in short order. Luckily that's all it did. Long story short new converter happy new thrust bearing.

Seeing as this is X2 and likely not your first rodeo I predict it will be something obscure like this. Like has been posted, not a lot of ways to cause this and short of rookie type mistakes it'll have to be something outside the box.

Kevin

Kevin, IRRC, there was some space, maybe 1/8th of an inch between the mounting pad and flex plate..not enough or too little to throw up a caution flag when I was installing.

I also did not notice any crank to converter hub interference, but I did not specifically look for that. Like I said before, I didn't notice anything unusual about the converter install.

When I pull the motor in a few weeks (buying a new house this weekend and won't have time to mess with truck for a while) I will post what I find.