Flex Plate

I have not asked a dumb question in a while so here it goes. My 98 Taco 2.7 A/T will crack flex plates pretty much every 9 months to a year. It's a hunting rig and gets treated pretty bad hauling feed like about 1500 lbs thru pretty rough woods and off camber places. I have put in 4 in the last 4 years and it is ticking again. I have checked motor mounts crank endplay and front pump bushing. I see there are braces that run from the engine to the trans or transfer case that I don't have. Could missing these be causing some flex cracking my plates?

 

I can't comment on the braces but do make sure you are doing this when seating the torque converter to the flexplate.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2014/MC-10109404-9999.pdf

https://youtu.be/P0n8ZsWhlL8?feature=shared

 

The trans bellhousing sits flush on the seperator plate and the seperator plat sits flush on the block? The alignment dowels dont hold the trans away do they?

 

It all appears to be flush BUT all my bolts look the same. I think I'm gonna pull my cover and check for the shouldered bolt