Oil Cooler Upgrade Kit for Duramax: Gale Inspects New Cooler
When GM debuted the 2020 Duramax, Gale was quick to tear down the engine and inspect the improvements overt the 2017-19 version. Nearly every component in the thermal management systems had been beefed up to handle the new higher tow rating. In order to sustain power, you must cool the engine. He immediately keyed in on the oil cooler. Without hesitation, he dissected it. What he found is that 2001-2010 Duramax coolers feature 11 copper cooling plates, 2011-2016 coolers have 12 plates, 2017-2019 have 14 plates, and the new cooler boasts 19 plates and far smoother water flow passages. Watch Gale inspect it.
It became clear that we could take advantage of the massive oil cooler by creating a package that would allow 2001-2019 Duramax owners to retrofit their oil coolers with the new 2025 unit. The Banks Oil Cooler Upgrade Kit improves heat reduction 31% or more on 2001-2007 and 2011-2019 6.6L Duramax engines. The older the truck, the greater the gain. The kit includes a new GM 2025 oil cooler with 1/8″ NPT port for temp sensor, all necessary hardware, and an AMSOIL oil filter.
Full Video Transcript
00:00 The whole idea here is, will this thing fit the earlier model trucks 01 through 10? That’d be LB7, LLY, LBZ, and LMM all use the same cooler oil filter assembly. LML, I don’t have one. So, we’re going to go right to 2017 through 19. This is the early L5P. For 2020, they’ve upgraded the maximum
00:30 towing capacity. If you’re going to run at rated power or close to rated power with a heavy load and just hold it there, you’re going to make some temperature. You got to have adequate water pump, fan, radiator, and adequate oil pump, which they already have. Adequate oil cooler
00:51 because the oil is going to take a lot more heat rejection under sustained power. All right. Oh, mercy. So, how do these things compare? The same style of plate is used starting all the way back in 01 on the LB7s. And this early cooler has 11 plates. The oil goes into this stack of
01:22 plates, through the plates, and out. And water flows through the housing from the entrance hole to the exit and through an elbow and up into the torque converter housing and then across the block in the back. It enters on the left side and then it goes through a duct in the torque converter
01:46 housing and enters on the right cylinder bank. 17 18 19 oil cooling plates on the 2020. We have 14 plates on the 17 to 19 and we have 11 on the 01 through 10. So the design change from 19 to 20 is pretty obvious. If you look in here as the water flows, this looks
02:16 promising, but the actual opening into the earlier housing is much smaller. It got better. If you look at this one, there’s your opening, but the entrance into the housing is much larger. Any way you look at this, bottom line is I want minimum pressure drop through the oil
02:36 filter and minimum pressure drop through the cooler and I want maximum cooling of the oil. So, we put a kit together that allows you to do this. All the parts, all the hard to find items are in the box. You can heavyduty oil cool all the way back to 01. You can find that kit on bankspower.com.