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[gary]

The garage rang me and said the coolant had gone in to the oil.and the head gasket had blown.he said it would cost £350 to put it right thats if the head was not distorted

[Markjay]

One thing at a time...

White smoke and head gasket:

Head gaskets rarely go on Omegas, and even then usually only if the engine overheated for a prolonged period. So if your Omega does indeed suffer from blown Head Gasket, it would be the odd one out....

Mechanics have ways of getting rid on annoying customers (no offence meant, it is just that for some mechanics all customer are annoying...), and quote either 'new ECU needed' or 'Head Gasket gone' hoping that you will find the repair too expensive and leave them in peace... far more sensible (for them) than spending hours diagnosing the fault down to a £30 component.


White smoke when the car is cold does not mean much, usually it is just water vapour and quite normal. It can continue up to when the engine reaches normal running temperatures (80-90 degrees).

Constant white smoke usually means valve stem problems, this is not good but not a show-stopper so the car can be driven until the problem is fixed.

What the garage was probably trying to say is that the white smoke is coolant that finds its way into the combustion chamber through a blown head gasket. But if this was the case, then you should also experience a significant coolant lose. Do you have to top up the header tank frequently? If you do not, then the white smoke has probably nothing to do with the head gasket.

EML light:

I am no expert on LPG, what but I heard from others here is that EML light does come on if the car has been converted to LPG, and this is not a problem as such. Hopefully someone else will be able to confirm

Fault diagnosis:

On the Omega, like most other modern cars, it is essential that the the engine fault codes are read. The codes will will tell you what is wrong with the engine (or at least what the ECU thinks is wrong with the engine). This is paramount before any remedial action is taken. If the garage read the codes, then post them here and you will get some advice as to how to proceed... alternatively find someone with a code reader and read the engine fault codes before doing anything else.

Hope this helps.


PS - reading your post again, it is quite possible that both the EML light coming on and the white smoke are quite normal and nothing to worry about... it is bad mechanics that give Omegas a bad name.  

[gary]

The garage rang me and said the coolant had gone in to the oil.and the head gasket had blown.he said it would cost £350 to put it right thats if the head was not distorted

[Elite Pete]

No just your mechanic

[Craig_R]

The garage rang me and said the coolant had gone in to the oil.and the head gasket had blown.he said it would cost £350 to put it right thats if the head was not distorted

Right stop you right there with your garage

you said you had white smoke now this would be the coolant going into the pots and getting heated and going through your system
all of a sudden they are saying its coolent in the oil this would not produce white smoke.

To see if coolent has gone in the oil its easy to spot, mayo on the dipstick and in the oil filter and oil filler cap but you can get alittle on the filler cap, the dipstick will give you the 100% you need to know

Check it yourself before you let them near your car with a spanner

My EML light comes on from time to time mainly if the car flips to gas and its not fully heated up but next restart its off and i have paperclipped it it always says Lambda sensors and no its not knacked as its brand new, only does it on gas mind you, not when just running on petrol

[JasonH]

Gary, what engine do you have?

If it's a 2.0 with a lot of miles then head gasket is possible. If it's a V6 then it's very unlikely to be the head gasket.

[Kevin Wood]

Couple of points to add:

Is there any oil in the water? On a V6 this is oil cooler failure normally misdiagnosed as head gasket failure. Can result in a little coolant getting into the oil too.

If an LPG system is lighting the EML it's probably down to the fuelling not having been set up accurately enough. This results in the lambda corrections going out of tolerance. A sign that the setup of the LPG system could be improved.

Kevin

[bigdods]

Oil cooler sounds more likely if you have oil and water mixing. In my case this was accompanied by a very slow water leak (max to min over about 2k miles) and a similarly slow oil leak. Local vauxhall specialist hit me for about £260 inc vat to supply and fit a new one, sounds like maybe your garage is going to replace the cooler for that kind of money but dont want to bore themselves with having to explain it to you. I would imaging a headgasket change for both sides would be more than £300.

[ians]

for some reason I think his is a 4 pot.  The initial post seems to have changed..??

[Elite Pete]

If its a four pot then his mechanic could be right

[markey mark]

no mate mine is ace  

[Markjay]

for some reason I think his is a 4 pot.  The initial post seems to have changed..??

Yes... I seem to remember he had 2.2 somewhere in there.... maybe I'm wrong  

[Craig_R]

he has changed his first post as it did say 2.2 and white smoke.

[N2STY]

he has changed his first post as it did say 2.2 and white smoke.

and something about a new lpg conversion ?