by 008 Julian W » 28 Jul 2012, 13:32
I had no idea Calibras have their design faults -as I hopped to buy one myself I thought Manta had one of the worse ones when they converted the 2.0 engine derived from the original 1.9 to Fuel Injection - and some crank engineer designed to place the injector hoses on a hot Manifold consequently your hoses do not last long and they can be a potential fire hazard - I understand this was not unique to Opel but Saab 900s ; Audi 80GTEs and other Euro Cars had this issue
Another design fault was the Water Pump is a bit of a bugger to get off - obviosly one those special dwarfs with special hands were used at GM plant in Belgium (Where they made the Mantas!) to in stall it - I had a special spanner made since
When I was running Opel Manta Club here in NZ in the 1990s I make a representation to then GMs technical Manager to say this was an an issue and what was GM NZ going to do about it - lots of hums and ahs and the end nothing was done ..and you know what worse part of this guys He was ( he could be still there) for15 years AA NZ Technical Manager for NZ! at GMs he had a reputation of been Lazy, Stuff was not been followed through... Hers another reason not to re-new your AA membership... (I personally belief all the AA Management team should all go..Noon is also useless) Only guy that is able is Stockdale at least hes a car enthusist and collects and buys up all the suriving Fiat 2300 sedands and wagons