Dead duramax
 

Long story short ran my 03 duramax out of fuel. Topped it up, bled the fuel filter, and pumped up the pressure. No go. Any simple suggestions from the assembled brain trust?

Replace the fuel filter if you haven't already.

Find the fuel return line that goes back to the tank and try bleeding from there. LB7, and LLY had them both on the driver side, IIRC.

Make sure the fuel filter housing isn't allowing the fuel supply system to suck air in past the primer plunger, or the electrical connector for the heater element.

I just got done fighting one that was ran out of fuel. and had all the injectors replaced . I have done a handful of these, but this one took me all day to get bleed, and fuel up to the filter, and into the rail .
Do you have any sort of a vacum pump ? The short of the story, is that I pulled the inlet and outlet hoses off the fuel filter housing. I first pulled vacum till I got fuel from the feed line, then I reconnected it. Then , I again pulled fuel , by vacum, from the outlet of the fuel filter housing. I was then able to use the hand pump to pressurize, and bleed the last little bit of air from the system. I used the bleeder on the filter housing first, then the big valve near the ac compressor. It looks like a huge r 134 ac fitting. I would depress on the valve core while pumping the plunger, and it finally burped out all the air. It started instantly after this .
I pumped that flippin' hand pump at least 3000 times trying to get it to pump up before I finally tried this . This one was run out of gas, but I had also replaced the injectors at the same time, so I had air everywhere.
Don't run em empty!!!!

Holey crap,yepp the same thing happened to me,i ran her out of fuel.I have a 04 Sierra with the duramax.What i did was filled the fuel filter full then screwed back in,just doing that is a mother,then used the pump on top of the filter until it got hard to pump,(OH YEAH),turned key to start position amd started fine.Btw i think i am on my 3rd set of injectors.

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I remember when I took my used Duramax for a test drive the salesman looked at the fuel gauge as we were getting ready to leave. It was at aprox. 1/8 and he swung the truck around to their on site diesel pump. As he was putting the fuel in he looked at me and said " if you buy this truck NEVER run it out of fuel " . I ended up buying the truck and RARELY let it get below 1/4 tank .

New Duramax owner here, LBZ Crewcab, long bed. I understand all long bed trucks have a 34 gal tank. I also discovered that damn gauge is the most inaccurate gauge on the face of this earth. When the low fuel light comes on, the gauge is sitting right on "E" but here is suppose to be another 8-9 gal left in the tank. I was brave or really stupid to keep it going for another 20 miles before I chicken out and filled it up.

I ran out of fuel in my old Cummins truck once and the tow truck driver had no idea how to get it started. That was a PITA as there aren't too many stations that carried diesel from way back in 1996.

Thanks to all, tackling this again today.
Amen to the fuel gauge PITA.
Halfway home have half a tank, five minutes later gauge drops to zip and fuel warning light comes on.
Irony here?
I get to within 15 feet of the diesel pump at the first station I come across and the pig dies right there.
3/4 ton Sierra, very hard to push...

I am betting than in the future you will never run out of fuel again. It sounds like a painful and expensive lesson to learn the hard way.

Any luck yet?

Someone may have said it already but you need to find out where to crack it open in order to bleed it. They get them all started at the factory or they'd never be able to sell them. :)

Thanks to all here.
Basically bled everything back, and all good.
Next job: change out the fcking fuel gauge sender!