Dr Kev. - Kam Servicing Network.

Hello Again!

It has been a mixed bag of news in the past few days. I don’t think that I alluded to the death of that wonderful singer Nina Simone in last week’s column. With a lifetime of musical achievement behind her, Nina will surely remain on of the greatest singers – male or female – of all time. And you know what they say about legends – they never truly die so long as their back catalogue is still available from EMI…

Then we’re got the SARS virus doing the rounds of the world. I was thinking about the naming of the illness the other day, and concluded that they had to include Serious as well as Acute (two very similar things) as if you take the Serious out, you get an acronym that is surely to be more ridiculed than feared… Well, almost!

Still, it is good news on the football front, with Man U having sewn things up nicely. Flicking through the channels at the weekend yielded some good games, nothing truly great, but at least the standards are still high. And what about all of these rumours about Becks going to Real? Now that his gaunt other half has dropped a few choice comments to the media, the hacks are doing their collective fruits in an effort to be the first with the tale. We’ll wait and see.

And then we’ve got that audacious art theft in Manchester that saw three paintings vanish without trace, only to be discovered around the back of a public convenience. It might not have been ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ but it still has the police perplexed.

Anyway, on with this week’s tale which involves a haemorrhaging Vauxhall Omega belonging to Mr Cassidy (name changed to protect his innocence) – a long term pal of my father.

The 3.0-litre V6 monster was dripping oil at quite an alarming rate when Mr Cassidy brought it into the workshop. One look at the state of the engine bay revealed just how bad the situation was – oil covered everything! So, the first thing to do was to give it a good steam clean and then a test run; that way we could see where the oil was coming from as it dripped down the clean engine bay.

Once the cleaned Omega had been left on idle for a few moments, the oil leak become obvious – the rocker cover seals were definitely perished. So, off came the covers and on went new seals. This should have cleared the problem up, but when the engine was restarted, another oil leak appeared – this time from the sump gasket.

It’s a lovely job changing the sump gasket as you have to empty all of the engine oil, while trying not to drop the sump nut into the vat of brown sludge that is collecting in the can. But it was accomplished with worrying ease, and on went the engine again.

Looking at the car from underneath, I breathed a sigh of relief. No oil spurts, squirts or drips – job done! But, when I popped my head over the radiator to check out the inside, there was a thin stream of black oil trickling tantalisingly down the side of the engine bay. The breather pipes were now leaking! If it wasn’t one thing then it was another with this car! By now, I was praying that this would be the last leak I would find – if the car still dripped then the only choices left would be crankshaft seal or head gasket – neither of which any of us wanted to think about on a car of this size! Believe me, you really don’t want to have to remove an Omega’s gearbox to do the crankshaft seals unless you can possibly avoid it!

This is one of the reasons that I hate having to tackle oil leaks. Basically, as I replaced old, worn out parts with new, the system pressure increased to what it should have been. This then put strain on the other old, worn out gaskets and pipes, which in turn split, leaked or oozed as the oil found weak points. Still, it all makes sense, when you think about it. And the good news was that once the breather pipes had been replaced, the engine stopped dripping (which is a good thing as the constant drip-drip-drip was beginning to sound like some form of torture!). Just to make sure, Shaun took it for one of his extended test drives (using our own petrol of course!) and it still didn’t leak! Victory was indeed mine!

While I was ferreting about looking for the sources of the leaks, I took the chance to inspect Mr Cassidy’s timing belt – which was in a pretty poor state of repair I have to say. After checking with him, the belt, rollers, bearings and tensioners were all replaced to ensure that he didn’t suffer any head-aches of the V6 kind…

Naturally, once all of this work was completed, the Omega went like a rocket. Mr Cassidy, delighted that his pride and joy was once more returned to A1 condition, grinned like a schoolboy when he came to pick it up, pumping my hand enthusiastically in thanks. That’s why I love this job so much – the looks on people’s faces when it all goes right.

That’s it for another week. Hopefully I won’t get any more oil leaks to fix, I’ve had quite enough of them with just this one!

Dr Kev Allen