My GMC Sierra 3500 dually

[Duraswede]

Hi everyone!
I'm a 22 year old diesel-freak and live in a nice country called Sweden and have recently bought a GMC from a dealer in Indiana (but the trucks first and only owner in US lives in Florida), it's not my first US-truck but definitly the best one, it's in a real good condition expect a "little" engine problem.. i have a coolant leak into one cylinder but it will soon be fixed! and then i hope i can get some trouble free years in the future, i have read a lot positive stuff about the D/A so there's still some hope left What worries me the most is the CAN-bus system, i'm afraid of electronics, it can eat my wallet up at any time.

I work as a Welder and i'm doing TIG-welding in aluminium, copper and stainless steel. On my spare time i'm mostly reading workshop manuals and learning how stuff works, i have specialized my self in Air conditioning- i have built my own AC-systems on a previous car.
I have rebuilt a couple of automatic transmissions and my latest project was to re-route the oil channels in my Volvo's transmission so that the Lockup works on other gears than just 4:th, and i customized the shift firmness by adjusting oil flow to the acumulators. i called Swedens biggest transmission shop and they had never made any mods more than installing shift kits so i saw it as a challenge.
i have also done some a large home electrical project in my parents house, and a lot of electrical stuff in my vehicles, so i'm very familiar with ohm's law, amperes, volts, hertz, µF, 3-phase theory, magnetic fields etc etc..

Well, i'll end here even though i could write some more but it will just be boring to read, so now i'll show some pic's of my truck!










i have just got it registrated here and i must say that the registration number i got was really funny, but it won't be easy to live up to it!
comments are welcome!
Regards
/Oskar

[Mark Rinker]

Nice truck - thanks for the information.

You sound like a very curious guy with a high energy for everything mechanical! Good luck with your head gasket (?) repair. Not a common occurance on the Duramax, but a few 2001s have been known to fail, before the head gaskets were revised in subsequent years.

What year is your truck? When and how do you plan to address the problem?

[Duraswede]

Nice truck - thanks for the information.

You sound like a very curious guy with a high energy for everything mechanical! Good luck with your head gasket (?) repair. Not a common occurance on the Duramax, but a few 2001s have been known to fail, before the head gaskets were revised in subsequent years.

What year is your truck? When and how do you plan to address the problem?

thanks!
yes i'm not afraid of doing things that others maybe avoid, it's a good way to learn!

I dont really know if it's just as simple as a injector sleeve that is loose, or it could be the worst, a cracked head...
i have also at least one bad injector because it's knocking under light load, it sounds as it's only on one cylinder. but i have bought 8 injectors just to get it done, and the biggest part of this job is to make acess to the engine, there's so much stuff that must be removed, so when the valve covers are off to replace injectors, it will be a piece of cake to loosen the head bolts and lift the heads to check if everything is OK, and it may be a head gasket leak, so why not replace them when i'm doing all this..

I forgot to mention that my truck is a 2003. i choose that year because if it were a -04 i would have to install a speed-governor set to 100km/h to get it registrated as a "heavy truck" here.
that's why i have those yellow/red reflex on the mudflaps, because all trucks with a GWVR over 3500kg is "heavy trucks" and i must have a special driving license, like your CDL's.


i will start the head-work next week when my vacation begins, so i'll post some photos! and if i find a crack in a head i'll be crying the next 5 weeks of my vacation...

[Duraswede]

now i have started to take it apart, i worked 3 hours today and it takes a lot more time than i thought to remove all wiring, hoses, covers, etc. etc..
it's just plenty of **** over the engine i made a headgasket change on my previous K10 6.2D and it took 8 hours to do both sides including oil change and AC recharge!
if feels like this will take at least 8 days..

here's some pics so far..



i wander if this is factory mounted? to me it looks like some aftermarket stuff that is supposed to gain HP (only on the paper)



a lot of parts waiting to be mounted:

[COMP]

thats a # to shot for

[More Power]

Nice truck! Thanks for the pics.

Jim

[Duraswede]

here's some more pics..




this is the cylinder that had a strange burn pattern, i think it's the one that knocked:


and, here's the crack i found, you can see it approx. 1/8" under the bottom of valve seat.

and here's the crack from the inside:


new injector sleeves installed into another head (from a 2004 LB7) that i bought:

[Duraswede]

here's some pics of my EGT sensor installation:

[Duraswede]

And my mega filter installation:


i moved the horn to this location:


finally it looks like it did before, and when it started it was so silent that i heard that my belt tensioner bearing is worn... though it's not that hard to replace..

Yeah! it's rolling again!!

[COMP]

is that burn pattern from a bad injector ??? like not atomizing fuel right ?

[Duraswede]

is that burn pattern from a bad injector ??? like not atomizing fuel right ?

yes, as you see the soot on the piston is not symetrical, there is no soot to the right, and the injector has 7 holes in the tip, and this holes should spray a mist of fuel in an even amount into the whole combustion chamber, and it looks like one of my holes wasn't spraying any fuel.
and i think that the injector was leaking or "dropping off" fuel because of the knocking sound, maby it sprayed to much fuel at the pilot-injection cycle, and therefore fired the cylinder to early.
all the other pistons had very symetrical soot patterns.
i plugged in my predator and checked the balance rates after the injector replacement and they were all around -0.5 but cylinder 4 and 8 was @ -3.5? i dont know why, but according to others here that had bad injectors this is nothing to worry about, as long as it dosn't diff more than 7-8 between them.