6.0 to LBZ

Long story short I've got an LBZ motor that's been on a pallet for 6 years in a warehouse & an '06 2500 gas burner with a bad heart. Both sourced at the low cost of hauling them off. How bad is this swap going to be? I've done some googling & have seen mixed results. Some say things will plug & play, some say it's like playing catch with an angry porcupine. What's the real story? I rebuilt my '00 from the frame up. It's not the wrenching that concerns me. It's all the little electric gremlins that tend to show their head that's concerning. Someone talk me out of it.:thankyou2:

What Trans are you planning on running? If I remember right if you want to run a Allison you will have to get a higher hump floor pan section from a diesel, or run a body lift to clear the transmission. As far as wiring goes, I believe you will need the LBZ engine, trans, and under hood wiring harness, along with the fuse block. The body harness plugs, and dash wiring plugs should plug right into the Diesels fuse block. As far as core support for intercooler and radiator, that should a bolt in. Also the Gasser LS trucks don't have the AAM 11.5, so I am not sure what that will do to the driveshafts as far as bolt compatibility.

As far actually doing the swap, what do you want out of it? IF the 6.0L truck is a loaded CCSB that is rust free with good paint, I might do it, or if you where wanting to build a race/pulling truck, probably. But just to do it for fun, I wouldn't do it. You probably could buy a good run 6.0L for under 2k and swap the engine out in 16 hours or less. The duramax swap, you would spend a mouth or more finding parts, adapting thing or swapping part out and probably end up spending 4 or 5K if you already have a good LBZ engine.

Really just looking for a cheapish/ fun truck to run around & quit putting miles on my stuff without having 6.0 fuel mileage. As far as trans, I might go Allison, I might put a built 48RE behind it with a floor shifter. It's all up in the air right now since I just got everything. The LBZ popped the EGR cooler at like 100k & drank some coolant before it shut down, was drained & pulled out of the original truck. AFAIK it was in good shape, otherwise. I won't have a good idea of how far it's gone until I get it on the motor stand.
Truck is a 2WD ECLB truck with a good body, good interior. Power train is just shot, no oil pressure on the gasser, & transmission that just barely pulled it on the trailer. I've got $80 bucks worth of fuel in everything right now. I've got to have basically the entire driveline anyway. At $4-5K I'm not really going to blow a ton of money to have a relatively fun DD.

Yes, make sure you use the fuse block, and all engine/trans harnesses from the lbz.
There are differences internally in the fuse block between the gasser and lbz. I found that out the hard way lol

I'll keep that in mind. What'd the hard way run you $$$ wise, if you don't mind, lol?

Box of goodies? Or nightmare in the making. Guess I'll find put when the lid comes off.

frankencummins said:

I'll keep that in mind. What'd the hard way run you $$$ wise, if you don't mind, lol?

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Didn’t cost too terribly much.. just a pair of batteries lol. The gasser fuse box would leave something turned on even with the key off. So after the truck sat for a couple days, I walked out to fire it up and nothing... killed the batteries. Threw the old box back in, ran a ground wire to the starter relay (was the original problem with the diesel fuse block) and have been using it ever since..

The normal stuff, like headlights and other general truck wiring that runs to the blocks are interchangeable as far as I know. Just from the fuse block to engine and trans is where the Pinouts start changing up.

Cool, that's what I was hoping. Tore the engine down to the short block tonight. Some surface rust, kinda expected it since the moter slugged water. A little W-D 40 & elbow grease pulled most of that off. Going to pull the pan tomorrow & check out the bottom end. Since I'm this far in the motor I'll be going back with ARP everything, might pull the crank & have it balanced. I'm hoping to have the block pulled down & cleaned up by the end of the week. I'll post some pics as I go. Probably going to be a more involved build than I was hoping, but might as well. I've wanted a LBZ D-max since I was 19, might as well earn it.

Locked up tighter than dick's hat band. Looks like 2 pistons on the right bank are toast, lips are chipped off. The rest are good. Won't be going back with a stock set anyway. Hope to get it on the motor stand tomorrow & get the pan off to see what sort of damage has been done to the bottom end. So much for a budget build/ DD, duraflight race truck it is.

On the third day we had rotation.

Side note here, does anyone make a billet upper oil pan? Sort of like a girdle/ upper oil pan combo?