Just bought a 2002 duramax

[dazdillenger]

Buddy of mine called me today, told me he did a service call for a guy who had a 02 crew cab shortbox 2500 duramax. 300k on the truck, headgaskets are blown (losing coolant). Was asking 2300, I told him to offer 1000 bucks. Low and behold, he took it. Looks like I'm the proud new owner of a duramax! Truck is a bit beat up, but It's got the allison in it, and was fully loaded. Anyone here versed in the lb7's weaknesses and potential with a tuner?

[mdub707]

With just a tuner... power is EASY to get, but you'll need a lift pump, a built transmission (at a bare minimum a shift kit) and so on and so on. They can make stupid power with just a tuner, and they're light.

Jimmy from Upstate can write you some EFI Live tunes for relatively cheap too, he's down in Cincinattus, not terribly far from you.

Injectors are the #1 problem in LB7's, they're 10x worse than 6.0 injectors. They go with no rhyme or reason. I've heard of BRAND NEW one's crapping out with less than 20k miles. Some last 150k, but usually you're replacing all 8 before they reach 100k.

Some guys have actually started swapping LLY heads/injectors/fuel injector module and everything related to the LB7's. LB7's were 96V systems, LLY were 48V I believe... You can ask Jimmy about that stuff too, he's very well versed in duramax stuff. Ask on the upstate site.

[Saabeh]

The LB7 injectors were also bad because they were the most difficult to change. Didn't they redesign the valve covers in later years to ease the swap?

[mdub707]

That is correct, they are under the valve covers.

[dazdillenger]

I'm going to pop the cab off, do the headgaskets and stud it-take care of the supporting mods right off the bat. After that, we'll see how it runs.

[Evil Eye]

Congrats on the new (to you) truck! Sounds like a fun project.

[mdub707]

Studs cost a lot more for those trucks too Mike. Lot more bolts per cylinder than our rides.

You shouldn't need to stud it anyways, unless you're planning on really bumping the power up... like over 600 or more. If not, just use stock bolts again. It will be fine.