Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: I_want_an_Omega on 30 January 2014, 13:17:04
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Seeing an earlier post about Ikea's food reminded me about a recent Omega related Ikea story - so not wanting the steal the other posters limelight I decided to make a separate one. An Omega tale which I hope amuses you ....
About 3 years ago we moved house, we had an overlap period of about 3 weeks where we had both properties so decided to self move. A number of rented vans trips were to be used for the large items/boxes etc - but what was needed was a large estate car for running backwards & forwards the 10 miles each way. So, a 1998 Omega V6 CDX manual estate was purchased from ebay a few weeks before completion. It was an ok motor with 112k on the clock, some tax & an MoT - however, there was a problem with it - a very noisy clutch ... The previous owner advised me that it had been making the noise for many months - so as I only needed it for a month went ahead & bought it. I took the risk.
Did an oil change, swapped the wheels off my Elite (saloon) as the tyres were MoT failures and away we went. Many many trips backwards & forwards until the job was done and I was happy. It could now be sold or scrapped and I'd had good use from it.
At that point miniSWMBO decided that she wanted some new Ikea stuff and realised that it had to be now or never due to the car going soon. So, off we went to Nottingham and filled the car with flatpack, box after box after box ......
Car made it back fine, clutch seemed no better or worse than before. Got home ok, unloaded, everyone happy - job jobbed :y
Once I had a cuppa there was only one more thing to do, move the Omega out of the way and park it up prior to sale/disposal.
At that point the clutch failed, as I was turning it around. The pedal just went to the floor - with the clutch being engaged. Apart from a scare lasting a second or so, I managed to turn the car around and park it where I wanted. An interesting activity doing a 3 point turn with no clutch - think about it. A combination of starting the car in 1st or reverse, switching it off in time. Then selecting neutral to start it & point the wheels in the right direction - over & over ........
If it had failed even 10 yards earlier than it did I would have been totally screwed - someone must have been smiling on me that day.
A week or so later Serek visited with his mate and took the engine & gearbox out. When he split them it was obvious that the slave cylinder had failed - the clutch itself was fine. I sold the leather interior on ebay and then scrapped the shell.
The interesting thing was that on the round trip to Ikea (about 100 miles), the car averaged well over 40mpg - ok I was cruising along nice & carefully and anticipating things - but was quite impressed.
So, that's my tale of a journey to Ikea and the last journey of an Omega estate - Rust in Peace :y
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Who says the omega is unreliable??, it knew EXACTLY when to break down for you. ;D
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Who says the omega is unreliable??, it knew EXACTLY when to break down for you. ;D
More than you would beleave sometimes.
Myself and Matchless popped to Brum many moons ago to pick up a second hand 2.0 for his old estate (which i understadn surviived untila few months ago).
As we backed onto his drive with the engine in a trailer, the old engine threw a wobble!
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Had a battery fail the second I pulled up in Halfords car park once.
Sadly the Halfords battery wasn't so thoughtful when it failed a year later. Pooring rain middle of nowhere.
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Friend of mine had a gearbox issue on his MR2 once - it would pop out of gear every now and then under power.. not overly surprising considering the gearbox was handling twice the design power & torque, I suppose.
Anyway, we all head off to a mutual friends for a day of spannering to swap the box out and I believe his words were "I'll just cruise around the M25" (from Woking to Hatfield Galleria, roughly). I'm told by the person following him that "cruise" means three digit speeds .. luckily the gearbox decided not to completely seize until he was trying to turn around into the garage at the end of the trip! :o
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Had a battery fail the second I pulled up in Halfords car park once.
Sadly the Halfords battery wasn't so thoughtful when it failed a year later. Pooring rain middle of nowhere.
I have heard that pattern parts are deliberately that inconsiderate which is why you should always go for Genuine. They like to break when it is more convenient for you. Just saying ::)