[biketopia]

How many miles are on the truck. The biggest killer is poor maintenance practices, not just oil and filter but air filter as well. GM released a TSB years ago stating something to the affect of poor air filter service and the use of K&N type filters was just as, or even worse for the DOD systems as poor oil change habits. Dirt makes it way in, clogs the lifter holes and bam, they don't pump up anymore. We have a truck at work with 100k on it and a lifter failed. My GMC I bought with 189k had yet to have one fail but I wasn't risking it, I pulled the heads and slid a cam and conventional lifters in, had it tuned and good to go. If you want to delete you need to know if you have dod only, or dod and VVT, you can keep VVT, with the right cam selection, but either way if you are deleting DOD you must swap cams, the lobe profiles are different on the dod cylinders and you'll have drivability issues if you just swap lifters. Summit makes a line of nice affordable truck cam's as well as Texas speed, I used a texas speed stage 2 low lift truck cam and have been more than happy with it. I did also swap on speed engineering long tubes while I had it apart but used the speed engineering y as well and it hooked right up to my stock exhaust, sounds great at idle out side the truck but stock like inside the truck cruising down the road.