First off I’d like to say I love this forum I am just now making an account but I have been using posts/dicussions on here for a very long time everyone seems very nice and helpful. doing head gaskets on my 2005 LLY, I’ve done mechanical stuff with my dad my whole life but this if by far the biggest job I’ve taken on alone. I spent the past weekend carefully tearing it down and got the heads off. Everything electrical is labeled and all of my bolts are in their hole so I’m confident I’ll be able to go back together with no problems but I’m curios if anyone has advice to make the process smoother, like if I should do things in a certain order on assembly to make it more pleasant. Also I need help on picking out parts, seeing he motor like this I want to replace/upgrade everything since it would be so easy at this point but that’s not within budget. What are some things I should consider doing while it’s torn down like this, the truck has an edge tuner and CAI and fass on it nothing crazy but should I go with studs in case I go with bigger plans down the road? They are crazy expensive but if it’s a must I might need to go ahead and do them, I see a lot of people saying to go with the grade C’s, my heads have some pitting from where A LOT of compression was leaking so they will be getting surfaced, the guy that’s doing them asked if I wanted to use a carbide bit or pcv bit, the Carbide is half as expensive but he says it doesn’t do as good of a job any opinions on that? I want to do all of this right the first time hoping to never have to do head gaskets on a diesel again in my life!! Any help is much appreciated sorry for so many questions scattered around I’m just looking for someone who could spare their $.02 and help me get this done.
Head Gasket Help
- Thread starter LSjag
- Start date
That all depends on how your gaskets look. I don’t know much about an lly but in my lb7 I reused a lot of them. That may not be a popular opinion tho. Brent has a few different kits. If you can just give him a call and tell him what you have. Or Lauren can help too. Both are great. They won’t sell you anything you don’t need.
Replace all the seals and gaskets and small hoses...... they may come back and bite you if you dont. Also the soft fuel hoses for the cp3, I would do the wp right now too since your right there...... check your motor mounts, super easy right now as well.
If you need help finding those fuel hoses lmk, I can point you in the right direction or ship you them.
If you need help finding those fuel hoses lmk, I can point you in the right direction or ship you them.
Print out merchant automotive's cheat sheet on which valves you can set & when. Makes it easier to stay on track. There are two groups of 16.
Make sure the shop has done alot of Duramax heads , it is odd they asked you what cutter you wanted to use knowing you have never done this before . Because you cant go in there like with gas heads and say , just take off 60tho and it will be good ! NOT!!! If all then seams ok replace idlers , tensioner , belt , t stats , check fan clutch , check fuel filter head , depending on miles you way want to do a lbz cp3 , welded or keyd water pump was already stated , race plug fprv , separate cooling stack and clean , lbz mouth piece .
Give us a call and i will get you set up with the proper parts to complete the job at an affordable price and give you a few pointers throughout the job. Let me know if I can help.
Heads just got dropped off the guy said he’s done dmax’s before and the carbide bit would be fine! Thank you all for the pointers it helps a lot! My truck has 180k I’ve got a new water pump coming and I plan on welding it. I’ll be checking into the other mentioned parts to see if I can dig deep enough in the ol wallet and get them coming too.
Okay my heads had some pretty deep pitting so he’s definitely going to have to take some meat off, I’m getting grade c’s so how much do you think he’ll be able to take off before I have to worry about clearance?
Awesome thanks, I’ll give y’all a call sometime today, can I ask for Brent and speak with you?