Omega Owners Forum

Chat Area => General Car Chat => Topic started by: aaronjb on 06 February 2011, 09:56:51

Title: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: aaronjb on 06 February 2011, 09:56:51
Having a car fettling weekend at a friends place with a nicely equipped garage, so after stripping one MR2 to a bare shell and pulling the roof off another, we decided to tackle some of my jobs list..

First came the door check strap bush - easy peasy (easier if I could have opened the door all the way, but there was an engine in the way!)

Then came breather cleaning - not too bad, although the breather box on the head is on the drivers side on mine, not passenger side as the guide says? Breathers turned out to be basically clear aside from the tiny holes in the box on the plenum.

Then came the cam covers.. Now it transpires that when I gave the vx garage the list of part numbers what I ended up with was:

Six *packs* of six black O rings for the plenum joint.
No o rings for the throttle bodies
ONLY TWO rather CAM COVER GASKETS!

So I've only done the drivers bank :( although it also turns out there was no oil in the wells, just around the cam cover bolts where they'd been torqued down too hard and flattened the small o rings...


Nothing is ever simple, eh? After all that PITA I'm quite tempted to see if one of the forums mobile mechanics will come and do the rest and a cambelt & accessory belt and tensioner.. I'm getting too old for this (I ache like you wouldn't believe today!)

Ok, rant over ;)
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: tunnie on 06 February 2011, 11:06:46
cam covers on V6 is pig, its easy as pie on the 4pots, sooooo much room!
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: Andy B on 06 February 2011, 11:28:53
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cam covers on V6 is pig, its easy as pie on the 4pots, sooooo much room!

A 4 pot might be easy but despite repeated mutterings here about how difficult cam covers & plugs are on a V6 I had no difficulty at all when doing mine. Maybe it's cos I use spanners more than a lot here  :-/  :-/  :-/  :-/
Be methodical, and they're straight forward.  :y :y
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: tunnie on 06 February 2011, 11:35:16
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Quote
cam covers on V6 is pig, its easy as pie on the 4pots, sooooo much room!

A 4 pot might be easy but despite repeated mutterings here about how difficult cam covers & plugs are on a V6 I had no difficulty at all when doing mine. Maybe it's cos I use spanners more than a lot here  :-/  :-/  :-/  :-/
Be methodical, and they're straight forward.  :y :y

Ohh I agree (uh-oh!) its a straight forward task just fiddly, forget which side it is but one is easy, its the other side with loom going over it was a pain!
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: Andy B on 06 February 2011, 11:52:59
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.... but one is easy,
driver's side

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its the other side with loom going over it was a pain!
passenger's side  ;)
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: feeutfo on 06 February 2011, 11:57:02
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Quote
.... but one is easy,
driver's side

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its the other side with loom going over it was a pain!
passenger's side  ;)
Off side/near side   :P.   ;D
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: V6 CDX-er on 06 February 2011, 11:58:35
I found the hardest thing was removing the coil packs. I simply couldn't figure it out untill a few kind folk on here had finished laughing and advised me on where I was going wrong.

Doing the plugs was real easy, even on the back plug (passenger side), so long as you used a u/j. The plugs would have been even easier if they hadn't been baked in place. Top tip, use a little copperslip when fitting new plugs!
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: V6 CDX-er on 06 February 2011, 12:00:13
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Quote
Quote
.... but one is easy,
driver's side

Quote
its the other side with loom going over it was a pain!
passenger's side  ;)
Off side/near side   :P.   ;D

I didn't find the loom to be that bad. Sure, it made it harder, but not that much IMO. Just removed all the plastic loom covers and stretched it out of the way using half a dozen cable ties attatched to the bonnet strut.
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: Andy B on 06 February 2011, 12:00:37
Quote
Quote
Quote
.... but one is easy,
driver's side

Quote
its the other side with loom going over it was a pain!
passenger's side  ;)
Off side/near side   :P.   ;D

it's easier to put driver's side or passenger's side cos some don't know their ar$e from their elbow. I heard some one at work the other day talking about their near side driver's side wotsit!  :-? :-?  ;) ;)
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: Andy B on 06 February 2011, 12:02:20
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.... and stretched it out of the way using half a dozen cable ties attatched to the bonnet strut.

cable ties are one use (but you get them from work  ::)) so I prefer electric string!  ;)
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: davethediver on 06 February 2011, 13:10:18
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Quote
Quote
cam covers on V6 is pig, its easy as pie on the 4pots, sooooo much room!

A 4 pot might be easy but despite repeated mutterings here about how difficult cam covers & plugs are on a V6 I had no difficulty at all when doing mine. Maybe it's cos I use spanners more than a lot here  :-/  :-/  :-/  :-/
Be methodical, and they're straight forward.  :y :y

Ohh I agree (uh-oh!) its a straight forward task just fiddly, forget which side it is but one is easy, its the other side with loom going over it was a pain!

Is this the start of something beautiful ;D ;D
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: Andy B on 06 February 2011, 15:45:19
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.....
Is this the start of something beautiful ;D ;D

 :o :o :o :o :o :o
 ;D
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: aaronjb on 06 February 2011, 23:02:12
I've still got the difficult side (passenger) cam cover gaskets to do - but clearly need to buy some gaskets for that side! It seems that rather than two pairs of camcover gaskets what I ended up with is one pair of camcover gaskets and one pair of orange gaskets that don't even belong on an Omega (at least I can't find a place for them! I'll post a picture tomorrow..) :-/

The job wouldn't have been anywhere near as frustrating if I hadn't found I'd got all the wrong bits  ;D Don't think I'll be going back to that dealer, somehow! Perhaps I'll just mail order the bits from andyc instead and just use the dealers for oil & coolant.. assuming they can give me the right bottles  ::)

*mutters and wanders off*
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: VXL V6 on 06 February 2011, 23:04:27
Orange gaskets are for the divider plate IIRC. Never seen any one have to replace them on here... Apart from V6-CDXer (I think) who's vehicle was totally devoid of them!
Title: Re: Wow, harder than it looks in the maint guide!
Post by: aaronjb on 07 February 2011, 00:29:17
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Orange gaskets are for the divider plate IIRC. Never seen any one have to replace them on here... Apart from V6-CDXer (I think) who's vehicle was totally devoid of them!

Oh no, I had those, too! I changed those out (the old ones were pretty squashed and hard) .. three gaskets, each made up of two lobes as it were.

The strange ones in question look more like they'd be an exhaust gasket only they're rubber - ahh wait, no! They must be the plastic divider to head gaskets! Two gaskets, each made up of three intake-shaped rings (that kind of 'oval with a bubble on the bottom' shape) joined together.