Another History of the LB7

[Big T]

https://www.drivingline.com/articles/duramax-history-lesson-1-lb7/

 

[THEFERMANATOR]

So much misinformation in that article.

 

[Big T]

So much misinformation in that article.

Can you provide some examples?

 

[NVW]

I'm no expert, but IIRC about 70 HP

 

[THEFERMANATOR]

It was 300hp 550 torque. LB7 rods are well known to shorten well short of 600hp, more like anything over 500hp is gambling. Peak boost was 22 for 01, 18-20 for 02-04. Not to mention the turbo pictured is of a 64mm drop in stock appearing replacement. Over speed on the turbo is more so boost dependant, not HP, 32 is the ceiling for it if you want it to live anytime at all. The FCA's fail quite often around 150k miles, and most CP3's tend to start going around 200K miles. Injector body cracking was mostly on the 1st and 2nd design's and corrected mid year 02, the failures now are from too much rail pressure blowing them apart. Ball seat erosion is but 1 failure and was corrected in 08, but nozzle erosion of the VCO nozzle IS still an issue. The special policy ONLY covered high return rates from ball seat erosion, not all failures. EGR valves were used on California AND northeast emission package engines from 02-04. Crankshafts break at ANY power level, not just high HP. Plenty of cranks have snapped at stock power as well as at 1K+(Dimitri made 2K HP to the wheels on a stock crank). Many believe this is due to the firing order stressing the crank as nobody has broken a new crank with an alternate firing order cam swap. Water pump failures are mostly from the cadt iron impeller in 01-05 engines and high rpm's coupled with rapid acceleration.

Theres alot of good info in it, but it drives me nuts when they mess up on something as simple as the torque. And alot of people have taken those HP limits as gospel, and lost engines because of it.