Evening All,
For anybody that remembers i've posted a few times about ongoing noises from the timing belt region of my Peugeot 306 HDi after a nightmare scenario 10,000 miles ago when I tried to get the belt and kit done along with crank pulley.
That scenario - on undoing, the crank bolt snapped and it became necessary to have it drilled out. After this the only possible replacement involved chemical metal around a narrower bolt - original thread obviously shot. Crank pulley held tight with a separate nut. No signs of this botch having caused any problems according to (new) mechanic.
The (old) job complete, I took the car away but have always been concerned by some noise from that general area, chirping/ticking at idle and scraping under load. Yesterday a wapping sound from the belt cover kicked in so I took it to the garage (different one, won't get into that again).
The situation i'm now in - stripped down so far to the crank pulley held in by this chemical metal, i'm told it could take some serious time to get the crank pulley off, which is required to get the lower casing off to even figure out what was causing the timing related problem - there was clearly a problem - this belt looks 70,000 miles worn after 10,000.
I ask them to continue and could be looking at 10 hours labour (best guess), another timing kit and possibly a water pump. The crank setup would have to be replaced in exactly the same way again.
I can ask them to reassemble it to working for total of 3 hours labour but looking at the belt its going to wear to snapping sooner rather than later and then its no good to anybody. I'm not a guy that would pass the problem on to an unsuspecting ebay bidder, attractive a solution as it sounds.
This car cost me £2800 in late 2005 and is about to hit 90k. Its seen around £800 quids work in the 1.5 years since bought. This is looking like around £500 more. They seem fairly confident they can do it, but not hour many hours it will take - removing old chemical metal being one hard to predict activity, and putting in more being the other.
So, what would you do? My thoughts are its not saleable unfixed, I need a car, its been very reliable generally but i'd imagine 90k is about the threshold for other issues to start occuring - clutch works fine but bites past half way - thats another 3-400 quid job if it went.
One plus point - i've probably stretched this problem out to about its limits without making things any worse - if i'd had it checked 6 months ago i'd be in exactly the same position.
Any input or similar experiences welcome and appreciated.
Cheers, Tom.