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[KJO]

The head gasket on my 2000 face lift 2.2 petrol auto Omega has stated to fail. It misfires when starting up on cylinder no. 1. Iv'e had it at the dealers and they
 confirmed it requires a new head gasket. the car has done 150k and does 2k a month. Iv'e had a price of €600 {(£480) I live in Ireland} to replace the gasket and skim the head. The price includes all materials and work. Is it worth doing or are there other major things that can fail at this mileage? It does not use oil, there's no noise from the cams, the injectors sound a bit noisy, but maybe they do on 2.2 Omegas. It had the auto box replaced at 130k with one that had done 17k. It's had no. 2 oxygen sensor and cam sensor replaced around 5k ago along with just having new rear shocks last week. The headlights are knacked in that they will not adjust nor are they self levelling. I need a reliable car for work as I do most of mileage in conection with work and therefore can't have it sitting in a garage being repaired as I do not have a backup car. Informed unbiased advice would be greatly appreciated.      

[twiglet]

I know £480 sounds like a lot of money, and may well be more than the car is worth, but sometimes it's a case of 'better the devil you know'.  You have done alot of the big jobs on the car already, and it's a known quantity to you.  If you replace the car, you may well have to start again with all the agro of having the car off the road.  Alot depends on what your budget would be to spend on a replacement.

[KJO]

Thinking of replacing it with an 04 S type Jag which has done 64k 1 owner (bank manger) ffsh for €4500.00 stg £3600 (they don't sell here) Can't get another Omega here, there're as rare as hens teeth. 

[Webby the Bear]

how did the dealer diagnose the HG?

[KJO]

First of all loosing water and no sign of any leaks. Did a diagnostics check and was misfiring on no. 1 cylinder. Took out all the plugs and no.1 cylinder plug was brown the rest were white in colour. Then looked into the cylinder and no.1 cylinder piston was reflecting the light that was shone down, the others were not reflective (I all saw all this myself). Lastly the car misfired (appeared to only run on cylinders from a cold start up).

[Webby the Bear]

First of all loosing water and no sign of any leaks. Did a diagnostics check and was misfiring on no. 1 cylinder. Took out all the plugs and no.1 cylinder plug was brown the rest were white in colour. Then looked into the cylinder and no.1 cylinder piston was reflecting the light that was shone down, the others were not reflective (I all saw all this myself). Lastly the car misfired (appeared to only run on cylinders from a cold start up).

i'm no expert and am only just doing my first head gasket at the moment but my understanding is the only way to be sure of a HG failure is with a compression test. was this done?

[cem_devecioglu]

First of all loosing water and no sign of any leaks. Did a diagnostics check and was misfiring on no. 1 cylinder. Took out all the plugs and no.1 cylinder plug was brown the rest were white in colour. Then looked into the cylinder and no.1 cylinder piston was reflecting the light that was shone down, the others were not reflective (I all saw all this myself). Lastly the car misfired (appeared to only run on cylinders from a cold start up).

i'm no expert and am only just doing my first head gasket at the moment but my understanding is the only way to be sure of a HG failure is with a compression test. was this done?

yep.. you were faster typing

[KJO]

Don't know if they did a compression test. What else could it be given the symptoms. Misfire on start up, loosing water and no visible leak, brown spark plug and a reflection from the suspected piston top. I would be very happy if it was something more simple.

[omega3000]

First of all loosing water and no sign of any leaks. Did a diagnostics check and was misfiring on no. 1 cylinder. Took out all the plugs and no.1 cylinder plug was brown the rest were white in colour. Then looked into the cylinder and no.1 cylinder piston was reflecting the light that was shone down, the others were not reflective (I all saw all this myself). Lastly the car misfired (appeared to only run on cylinders from a cold start up).

How much water was it losing and was it overheating , if it turns out to be the head gasket i would say fix it 

[Webby the Bear]

Again dont want to give any wrong info but if you can see reflection on the top of the cylinder and the others not that would i believe suggest incomplete combustion in that cylinder. Obviously complete combustion will produce the black soot which suggests i believe is why your getting no reflection. Obviously check with the lads on here but compression test will confirm whether or not you h gasket is gone.  I saw a video where this exact thing happened and the piston rings had moved round and the gaps were letting the mixture through the bore. Not saying thats what the problem is but you know there are other things :-)

[Abiton]

The shiny piston crown tends to suggest that it has been steam-cleaned.  That in turn suggests coolant ingress into that cylinder. 
To be really sure, I'd check it a few more times at various times after shutdown, looking to see actual coolant in there.  Bit of tissue taped to a stick, down the plug hole to sample any fluid that is found.  If it looks/smells/tastes like coolant I'd say that's pretty conclusive evidence of HG failure.

'Impressive' hardness of coolant hoses is another likely indicator of coolant/cylinder communication.

On ours, one symptom that went away straight after fixing the gasket was that the header tank would still be pressurised after an overnight cooldown.  I guess the leak path was only open at higher temps, so the coolant overpressurisation could be trapped in as the engine cooled and closed off the leak into the pot?

Compression test can be misleading if there is only a very tiny 'leak path'. Any fluid on the piston crown will tend to decrease the total volume, and may cancel out the effect of any leakage out of the leak path, or send the reading the other way.  On ours the compression was maybe 10% higher on the leaking cylinder.

[Abiton]

Oh, and yes, I'd recommend fixing it rather than taking a gamble on another car. 

[TheBoy]

Thinking of replacing it with an 04 S type Jag which has done 64k 1 owner (bank manger) ffsh for €4500.00 stg £3600 (they don't sell here) Can't get another Omega here, there're as rare as hens teeth.

Ford era Jag

You'd have to be a brave man to buy that

[Webby the Bear]

check them sills :-)

[TheBoy]

check them sills :-)

Last of your worries with Ford era Jags