Hi and sorry for the late reply, my excuse being work commitments lol. No seriously, to all you Omega Knights out there..... I really valued all your replies and as a newbie with a teething problem like this, time was to put the call out to the faithful omega knightes
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Anyhow, all is well now and with the excellent help of an ebayer seller Omega52.....job done
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:oThe fault lay internally within the petrol tank area, a small split had slowly opened up over time from gentle abrasion. The coil or single loop in appearance, type rubber fuel pipe that is connected at the top of the pump (feed outlet) and being the 2.6 version, this one pipe is also sheathed in a protective plastic webbing, unlike the 3.2 variant the same fuel pipe version appears with no outer protective sleeve. This is probably due to the 3.2 fuel pipe having a deeper coil or loop within its overall shape of the pipe, which allows a greater clearance from the white plastic housing that contains the petrol pump.
On closer inspection of what caused the chaffing in the first place, creating the tiny split. First the outer protective sheathing/webbing is too short for the job it was intended for, the fuel pipe is approx 13 inches in length and the protective webbing is approx 6 inches in length. The gist of the tale, is that due to shape of of the 2.6 looped shaped fuel pipe and the closer proximity to the plastic pump housing (unlike the 3.2 version affording an extra 2 inches in clearance), this fuel pipe was actually being chaffed from one of the 3 plastic lugs that protrude from the top, outer rim of the plastic fuel housing through the constant action of the changing fuel levels within the tank. Vauxhall people probably knew of this potential issue hence the protective sleeve on 2.6 version, if only they had made it a couple of inches longer in length a greater degree of protection would entail although it only took 17 years since rolling of the production line for the fault to occur, not bad i suppose
. The upshot being i have a lot of spares now as these original parts are not available from vauxhall any more
Hope this helps, once again a grateful thanks to all who took the time to share their knowledge on this