Injector Replacement Nightmare

[JCS]

I started having smoke problems in early July with my 2500/DMAX. After spending 2 weeks (that's right, two weeks!) at the dealer, my truck was diagnosed with bad injectors and a blown head gasket. After driving my truck for two more weeks, I returned it to the dealer on August 4th. That day, they placed the order for the injectors and tore the heads off. It is now August 26th, and the ETA on the new injectors is still "a week or two away". I have had to rent an F350 from a local machine shop at the rate of $100 per day plus mileage in order to continue my business, as the DMAX was my work truck. I had to rent this truck because my dealership would not provide me with an equivalent vehicle to the one that they've now had for 5 weeks out of the last 7. They've told me that GM "may reimburse" me my out-of-pocket expenses for the F350 that I have been renting. Boy, that PowerStroke sure runs well, and the truck pulls at least as good as my DMAX. Anyway, I was told that the head gasket replacement was not going to be covered under warranty and was going to be a 34 hour job. Because some of the work for replacing the injectors and the head job are the same, they would knock 7 hours off the head job, which would take it down to 27 hours. Does this seem reasonable for replacing head gaskets on both heads? Who do I need to call to express my EXTREME DISPLEASURE in this situation? Customer service at GM has basically told me TOUGH S***! Not what I expected from a 200K engine! Are these injectors really in that short of a supply?

[More Power]

Just this morning I spent over an hour at our local GMC dealership getting the A/C charged in our Project Duramax. While doing that we discussed Duramax service in general (the tech who did the A/C re-charge is their lead diesel tech).

I asked him about injector service, and what his impressions were for injector replacement frequency as a percentage of trucks they've sold. He told me injector replacement is pretty rare, but has involved a few of both LB7 & LLY.

I asked about injector availability, and whether he had to wait any significant amount of time to get replacements. He said no, and mentioned an LLY he worked on recently. Replacement injectors were readily available via overnight or next-day. He also mentioned that the new policy is to replace all eight injectors when one or more are identified as being defective.

He told me that DTC codes P0093 & P1093 (depending on model year) appear in some of the Duramax trucks he sees. These codes indicate "Large Fuel Leak Detected", which is a scary thing for someone not wanting to hear about injector problems. However, in most of the cases where these codes appeared, the problem was traced to a plugged fuel filter, which can produce the same trouble codes. Again, all according to this dealer tech.

When I heard that, I wondered if any injectors have been replaced for these codes at other dealerships, but only had a plugged fuel filter (generates >=5" of vaccum)....

MP

[JCS]

Thanks for the reply. After printing out the reply, I drove to my dealer and let the parts manager have a read. He immediately called GM parts and was told that there are currently 20,000 injectors on back order, and it will be "1 or 2 weeks" before the dealership receives the replacement injectors. The parts manager told me that "this is a horrible problem", and can I imagine how many Duramax owners are in the same situation as me. I did a quick calculation and determined that there are approximately 2500 Duramax owners in the same situation as me. Anyone know a good "class action" lawyer?

Now let's see. Where did I put that Ford Truck salesman's business card?

[KenZ]

Sounds strange to me. Why did they even bring it into the shop if they couldn't get the parts. I would ask to see where the heads were leaking. Both sides!!??. You didn't say how many miles on the truck. Should be covered under warranty if under 100k. You mentioned 200k, but I'm guessing you were talking about the expected life of the engine. I stated early on that this extended warranty on the injectors was a little suspect. Get your truck into the dealer and then they can find all sorts of things you need done--or tell you that there are additional problems. And how are we supposed to know?

I guess you have to find a reputable dealer.
Good luck.

[JCS]

Truck has 110K miles on it. Not sure why they've got both heads ripped off the motor. When I went to the dealer 2 days after I brought it in to get some personal items out of the truck, my heads were laying upside down on the bench. I walked over to the bench, and the repair technician came up and said "you weren't supposed to see that". Do they normally replace BOTH head gaskets when only one of them goes? I'm assuming that heads don't have to come off the motor for the injector replacement procedure.

[DmaxMaverick]

Go there now and demand to see those gaskets!!! Take a camera, and a friend.

Bet there's nothing wrong with them, or wasn't, anyway.

The heads do not need to be removed to replace the injectors. Only the valve covers.

No. Both head gaskets do not have to be replaced if one is bad. What was their diagosis that led to the gaskets? Did they consult TAC? They better have, for a head gasket failure! Ask them for the TAC complaint incident #. If they contacted them, they'll have one.

Sounds like that dealer replaces a lot of muffler bearings. Those can get expensive.

[BLUMAX]

There must be injectors out there somewhere, at least here in the North West. I just got my truck back after a injector failure, which they think was caused by the fuel injector pump that also failed. Total shop time was 1 week! When this happened a week ago I was also worried about parts after seeing folks here complain, but my dealer had no problems, and I got'er back this morning. They did say this was the 1st time they've heard of the injector pump failing, actually had small chunks and slivers when they pulled it out. Sorry to hear of your parts problems. :confused:

[dmaxalliTech]

JCS, Sounds like you are getting the major run around here. Might be worth putting it all in a box and towing the thing over to Grand Rapids for a real tech to work on it. Feel free to email me, I would like to speak with you regarding all of this

Eric
tqauto@aol.com