HSP Billet Thermostat Housing Kit Install: 2001-2010 Chevy Duramax LB7 & LLY

Hi, I'm Wade McGinnis from Thoroughbred Diesel and today we're doing an

install

ation of the HSP Billet Thermostat Housing Kit for the LB7 and LLY Duramax trucks. HSP has done an excellent job of building a better mousetrap with this LB7 and LLY Billet Upper Radiator Hose and Thermostat Relocation Kit. This is a really super nice kit for those who have dual fuel and twin turbos and need to make a little more room inside the engine bay. I'll tell you what, just for a standard truck, it's really cool because it takes the upper radiator hose, the coolant tube, and takes it out of the driver's side valve cover.

So if you're looking for injectors or something like that, you don't have to fool yourself with the stupid upper radiator hose sitting there in your way. And it really just dresses up the engine, makes it a little more functional. And that's really what HSP does. Not only does HSP make very, very attractive things, but all of their things are designed to be functional and make your engine and work on your engine easier and make it... They just design more functional parts. So let's review what's inside the kit. So the coolant pipe or the upper radiator hose pipe actually has the HSP logo on it, very, very, very nice.

All this is a layer of dust. A few words about HSP stuff. Most HSP products can be found in a variety of different colors, almost any color you can think of, they are powder coated. You can also get custom coloring. We can talk to you about that if you have any questions about it. This is the upper radiator tube. It has the HTSP logo. It's really cute. Then all the silicone tubes, or all the radiator hoses, the rubber material itself, are all silicone. They all have the HSP logo. That saw the engine compartment. We have a little straight collar, it's got that there too.

Now, these

thermostat

housing

kits are designed for both... If you have your stock turbo that will require you to run the coolant return line, or if you have an aftermarket turbo that is uncooled, that is not coolant cooled , they have

thermostat

housing

s for that too. So this will come with the bolts you need to screw it to the top...the coolant crossover tube. Comes with reinforcement bolts for that. It is also two pieces. This is the thermostat housing cover. It's two pieces, so not necessarily...depending on what you're doing to the truck. If you have to move the upper radiator hose, you don't necessarily have to unscrew this block and expose the thermostats.

You can just unscrew the top, move the upper radiator hose and do whatever you need to do, very functional. All of this is also powder coated material. All the hardware you need comes inside the kit, bolts and such. So everything is here. This is a super, super pretty piece. We are very excited about this. If you own an LB7, you've probably already moved on to the world of making your own injectors. You know one of the most horrible things is that you actually have to remove the driver's side of the engine, which is the slower side, and it's also the upper radiator hose.

This will eliminate that and simply decorate the engine bay of your truck. Now let's look at a stock engine and where that coolant tube is on the engine and how this will improve that. So what we're going to address on this engine is, we're going to address this upper radiator hose that goes to this coolant tube here that goes to the thermostat housing. The thermostat housing bolts to the coolant crossover pipe that runs to the front of the engine. You have this line. Now, this is with the stock turbo, or a coolant cooled turbo, to our coolant supply turbo.

Your coolant return line goes here to the turbo. Let's get all this out. And what the HSP kit is going to do is divert the upper radiator hose directly over here and into the radiator port. So the first thing we need to do for this is to go ahead and unhook our serpentine belt. The reason we do this is because we are going to move our air conditioning. 3/8 inch drive, most of you probably know this. Let's lower our belts. Now, what we're going to do is go ahead and move our air conditioning compressor. So four 15 metric bolts and go ahead and unhook the wiring harness from the compressor.

Move that over there, the pressure sensor here, then you're ready to go after your four 15 metric bolts. And normally I would use a power ratchet for this, but the guy standing directly behind the camera right now has my 3/8 power ratchet on the floor of his truck, so no power ratchet today, folks. So let's do this Amish style, no disrespect to the Amish who are watching this video. I probably don't have cars, but that's okay. Now we're going to take out these 15 metric bolts. Video magic, hopefully Jim will advance this. The Amish don't usually have computers either.

I don't think they build computers either. Don't know. Also, if you're looking at this and saying, "Where's the top fan shroud on this truck?" Well, you'll notice that this is just some kind of mockup. We don't have the fan shroud on this truck and you'll notice we don't have all the bolts on the coolant crossover either. In fact, we put this together just so we could record this video for you today. Alright. And once you have removed the bolts, make sure you have disconnected the AC compressor wiring harness. We'll just bend it out of our way.

Now, as you can see, this gives us full access to the thermostat housing and the upper radiator hose. Now, what you're going to want to do is go to the passenger side of the truck and drain the bottom of the radiator here in that general area, at the bottom. Locate the radiator drain cock and drain all the coolant from the radiator. Place it in a suitable collection container if you decide to reuse it. Otherwise, throw it away and dispose of it properly. Now that we've covered all that, fast forward in time, we've drained the coolant from this engine.

The first thing I like to do is go ahead and unhook the upper radiator hose. That's probably going to be one of the biggest sources of coolant I have there, and I can drain it from this side, so I'll unhook the upper radiator hose. If you haven't done this before, you know Chevrolet, you can open that hose with a pair of pliers and what it does is it locks into place. And what I do is try to avoid that. So I let mine not lock and used clamps here, which are not going to come loose today.

Here we go. Now we have removed the upper radiator hose. There will be two 12 metric bolts, one here, then you'll have to have a long extension to go into the other one, which is angled right here. We have already taken them out as you can see. Then you have to unscrew the four screws that hold the thermostat housing. Again there are 12 metrics. And one, two, three and four. Go ahead and remove those screws. This will allow you access to remove the thermostat housing. Now, a word here. If you haven't drained all the coolant out of the engine, you will have... some coolant coming out of here.

It's going to end, so keep that in mind. And last but not least is the coolant line, the coolant return line. For you that have original chargers or chargers that have coolant lines, you will need to remove that hose. Alright. I came to the fight, Adam, without my straight screwdriver intact. Evasive maneuvers, at this point we will use a Leatherman. We will not be using any original hardware with this kit. HSP has provided us with all new hardware, so if you find something here that gives you trouble and decide to cut it, feel free to cut it hardware-wise, because you won't be using it again. .

Okay, now we're going to lift up the thermostat housing. Be sure to clean all applicable wiring harnesses. And now this is over. You can see that with just that we've sped up the process of removing the driver's side valve cover quite a bit. Now, all we have to do... pop the main engine belt, get the intercooler tube out of the way, some stuff behind it with the glow plugs, and we have pretty good access to the driver's side valve cover. It speeds up the process quite a bit. Plus, it frees up a lot of space for us in this area, if we need it to...

If you get a Triple CP3 kit or just a bunch of aftermarket stuff, twin turbos, whatever you need, it just frees up a lot of space. It will also make work on the engine easier. Alright, now let's go ahead and

install

our aluminum thermostat housing. You'll just want to make sure the thermostat housing is clean of debris and that the HSP housing is clean of debris as well. Make sure you have the thermostat gaskets oriented correctly and that they are in good condition. If not, stop and get some new thermostat gaskets. So we can go ahead and place it over the thermostat.

You want this with the coolant return port and you want it pointing towards the turbo or towards the rear of the truck. Go ahead and install the bolts. And then we'll torque them in an alternating sequence to 15 foot-pounds. Alright. Next, you're going to want to go ahead and put in the coolant line for your turbo, and just go ahead and plug it into the thermostat housing here, and then try to figure out how much coolant line you need here, and that's it. Go ahead and remove the excess. And our trusty Leatherman is here to save the day again.

And it's so boring that I don't have to worry about cutting off any of my appendages, because I wouldn't do that. Those of you in the land of television, as you can see, barely cut the hose. Very good. Go ahead and reconnect it to our turbo. Your turbo may have a slightly different setup than this, but you get the gist of what we're doing here. Alright. And go ahead and tighten the clamps. Next, we're going to go ahead and put the thermostat housing cover on, and then I'm going to go ahead and tighten these bolts to the same level as the base.

I'm going to go ahead and come up with 15 foot-pounds on all four bolts, the top cover. They are actually in the same positions as the originals. We are going to remove our old fuel cap because it gives us better access to tighten the other bolts. Go ahead and tighten them, torque them down to 15 foot-pounds. Alright, the first thing we're going to do now that we have the thermostat housing on, we're going to go ahead and place our straight piece of silicone and I'm going to orient this clamp where I can get to it. Go ahead and put it down.

I'm also going to loosen this clamp. Slide it over. Next, we're going to go ahead and attach the thermostat end of our tubing. Just go ahead and get started, and then it will give us an idea of ​​where we need to be for our next silicone tubing. Silicone tube, here too. Go ahead and... place our two clamps here. We'll go ahead and run the tube to the top outlet of the radiator here. And then what you're going to do at this point is continue working the two pieces until you get them exactly where you want them.

And once you've done that, go ahead and tighten both clamps. Let's go ahead and work this wherever we want. Just there. I'm going to go through...tighten all of our clamps here. Alright. Now, this has our HSP upper radiator piece in place. What we'll do at this point is go ahead and fold up our AC compressor and put it back in place, and make sure we have the wiring harnesses out before we screw it on. I'm going to go ahead and tighten up our air conditioning compressor. Alright, now we have our AC compressor tuned. What we're going to do at this point is go ahead and put the serpentine belt back on.

Alright. As you can see, the serpentine belt solves this perfectly. If not, you'll have to move some clamps, but you shouldn't have any problems with that. We'll reconnect both electrical connectors to our air conditioner and voila, we have the HSP thermostat housing, upper radiator hose, coolant line, coolant tube, whatever you want to call it, rerouting completed. Simply imagine that the upper radiator fan shroud is in place. So let's thank the guys at HSP for sending us this kit for installation. It's a really nice kit. You guys who do a lot of work on your engines, or if you have aftermarket accessories, dual fuels, twin turbos, you just want to make your engine a little more affordable, just dress up your engine, check out this kit.

So if you have any questions about HSP or any of HSP's products, give us a call here at Thoroughbred Diesel. Like and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching.