10-01-2020, 11:31 AM
Very hard to advise TBH as there are so many factors to take in to account like general condition of the car &how attached you are to it. At this age they do need a fair bit of maintenance & if you aren't able to do a lot of it yourself then the economics do start to look a bit marginal. Not to mention the hassle of having to take it for repair regularly. If the repair bill on a car is £500 and it's only worth £500 it's tempting to say it should be scrapped. But if spending that £500 gives you another year of motoring then it isn't such a bad investment. The depreciation on a newer car could easily exceed that cost.
You face that risk of big maintenance bills with any older car and anything made in the last 10 years has a lot more electronics that can go wrong & are expensive to fix. It's all swings & roundabouts really. The key thing in my mind is whether the bodywork is still solid & if there are any other very major repairs pending. One of mine is rusting out in multiple places & water leaks in all over the place so it isn't long for this world. It'll become a parts donor soon!
Also, if you're not savvy about cars then you really need a garage you can trust 100%. A trustworthy garage could look over the rest of the car for you & tell you if the HP pump is all your likely to need in the next 12 months (assuming the HP pump is the problem). If you've also got a worn beam, wheel bearings that rumble, split CV boots, leaking shocks & any number of other things then are you really going to bother with the pump? I'm a bit suspicious about them saying the HP pump is the problem when it's giving you an EGR & throttle position sensor codes. Trouble is I've got petrol models & diesels aren't my area of expertise. Really need one of our derv guru's to chip in. The HDi engines do apparently go on forever if they've been well-maintained though.
As for the dipstick tube, it probably does come out but whether it will come out intact is another matter, and it's likely a stack of other stuff will have to be moved to get at it. Most 306's have an oil level indicator gauge in the instrument cluster so you can do without the dipstick. I wouldn't have thought the broken bits would do any harm even if they dropped in to the sump. Alternatively, it might be possible to remove the sump & push the stick back out from below, but am just speculating as have never had the sump off mine, let alone an HDi.
You face that risk of big maintenance bills with any older car and anything made in the last 10 years has a lot more electronics that can go wrong & are expensive to fix. It's all swings & roundabouts really. The key thing in my mind is whether the bodywork is still solid & if there are any other very major repairs pending. One of mine is rusting out in multiple places & water leaks in all over the place so it isn't long for this world. It'll become a parts donor soon!
Also, if you're not savvy about cars then you really need a garage you can trust 100%. A trustworthy garage could look over the rest of the car for you & tell you if the HP pump is all your likely to need in the next 12 months (assuming the HP pump is the problem). If you've also got a worn beam, wheel bearings that rumble, split CV boots, leaking shocks & any number of other things then are you really going to bother with the pump? I'm a bit suspicious about them saying the HP pump is the problem when it's giving you an EGR & throttle position sensor codes. Trouble is I've got petrol models & diesels aren't my area of expertise. Really need one of our derv guru's to chip in. The HDi engines do apparently go on forever if they've been well-maintained though.
As for the dipstick tube, it probably does come out but whether it will come out intact is another matter, and it's likely a stack of other stuff will have to be moved to get at it. Most 306's have an oil level indicator gauge in the instrument cluster so you can do without the dipstick. I wouldn't have thought the broken bits would do any harm even if they dropped in to the sump. Alternatively, it might be possible to remove the sump & push the stick back out from below, but am just speculating as have never had the sump off mine, let alone an HDi.