Long time since I did any serious spannering on a car however, took the bull by the horns and decided to do the cambelt on my recently acquired MV6 along with a few other jobs.
Here's some observations
CambeltCan highly recommend Vauxhall Parts Warehouse in Suffolk, found them on eBay and they were £50 cheaper than Eurocar Parts for the same ContiTech cambelt kit. They also had a waterpump when ECP were completely out of stock.
I'd already purchased the cambelt DVD when I had my old 2.5 V6 CDX, brilliant !! I had my netbook setup close to the car so I could follow along - bit like painting by numbers - the 2.6 is definitely more straight forward to work on.
Spark PlugsReplaced all 6 sparkplugs - only difference from the guide on here was I managed to do the passenger side without having to fully remove the cable tray.
Throttle Body/Plenum/BreatherAgain very straight forward following the guides on here. The only observation I would make is that it is easier to sort the spigots where they go into the breather chamber (?) by removing the drivers side coil pack, other than that easy peasy.
FiltersChanged Air filter - very easy
Pollen Filter and Scuttle Drains - again very easy
Having done all the above jobs, came time to fire the car up - you could have knocked me down with a feather - it started first time - just like in the DVD
Having had to spend £250 ro join the AA and get relayed home because the Aux drive belt went, you could say I was mighty relieved.
Still To DoOil and Filter Change - any merits in changing the oil filter to canister type?
Fuel Filter - should this be done?
Coolant looked pretty clean when I changed the water pump - is there any need to do a coolant system flush?
I need to sort out the exhaust at some point - the "garage" I bought this from had a "mate" who did MOTs - loads of bandages on the rear pipes of the exhast - sounds nice though
Does anybody have access the an EPC with a picture of the wiper mechanism that they could let me have - the linkage between the drivers side and passenger side has come adrift so I only have the driver's wiper working - I can't work out how to reconnect the link or what part I need to ask a breaker (or one of you guys on here) for.
Long post I know but I'd just like to say a really big thank you to all you guys that take the time to document and photograph all the jobs that need doing on our Omegas. For an amateur spanner (anorak
) like me, they prove invaluable - thanks
Col - apprentice spanner
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