Head Gaskets The Right Way - Part 2

In a three-part series, we’re exploring what it takes to replace the aging head gaskets in Cummins, Duramax, and Power Stroke engines. In the Oct. ’13 issue, we took a hard look at the ins and outs of replacing a Cummins head gasket on a 5.9L 12-valve engine. This month, we’re moving on to the second installment, which involves a head gasket job on an ’02 Duramax-powered Chevrolet. If the truck looks familiar, it’s because we actually wrote a feature on it (“The Survivor,” Aug. ’13). True to magazine luck, the truck started to lose coolant after our photo shoot, an indication of a blown head gasket, injector cups, or both. Either way, the engine needed to be taken apart, so we headed down to Pacific Performance Engineering (PPE) in Fullerton, California, to follow along as the crew disassembled the engine in search of any offending issues.

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