Astor hdi daily

[ozonehostile]

After being rear ended in my 406 coupe (still pissed off about it)  i decided to go back to basics again and found myself a nice hdi dturbo to use on my now increased commute to the new job.  Much better on fuel than the coupe, still looks great as it's a 3dr 306, almost gti6 handling and half the insurance cost of the old land yacht. Here's what I found:

2001 astor hdi dturbo,  last owner had it for over 10 years! 
Very nicely looked after, bodywork is really good apart from a small crack in the front bumper that I'll repair :

Plans are, full service with genuine parts, new cambelt and waterpump, new rear beam (started to knock and small amount of camber on one side) some 40mm lowering springs, maybe some Bilstein shocks, 6brakes, 6 splitter, black masks and some stage 2 goodies eventually as I've never had a stage 2 hdi and what better place to start!

[mr_fish]

very lucky find. seems like the plans are standard to you when you get a new machine

[dashmader]

Looks like new, very good find

[silverzx]

Is it a Y reg?

[Poodle]

Yet another minter purloined by the hereford pug addicts, you bastard!

[ozonehostile]

Is it a Y reg?

One of the last x reg. Very annoying aha

---

Yet another minter purloined by the hereford pug addicts, you bastard!

This one was a pita to bring home, it was in Luton but took a whole day travelling there and back because every single road between Hereford and Luton had roadworks and speed restrictions. 

Worth the trip though, found a few little bonuses not mentioned by the seller like a longlife stainless exhaust, pioneer speakers, Bluetooth all wired in with hands free, freshly refurbished cyclones, genuine roof bars, detachable tow bar, 2x spare mint cyclones, bags of genuine Peugeot clips etc and it was already stage 1 mapped!  
Nice little bits from a car owned by an enthusiast for the last decade I guess

[silverzx]

Is it a Y reg?

One of the last x reg. Very annoying aha

Ah f-ck that, scrap it. 

[ozonehostile]

Went to do the cambelt, tightening the bolt into the cam to lock off the timing and the pulley sheared!
Currently awaiting a new cam pulley from Johnny98746975322468 before I can put it back together.

Back to using the gti6 for my 60 mile commute lol

[dturbodani]

Went to do the cambelt, tightening the bolt into the cam to lock off the timing and the pulley sheared!
Currently awaiting a new cam pulley from Johnny98746975322468 before I can put it back together.

Back to using the gti6 for my 60 mile commute lo

Saw this last month on Auto Trader had first refusal on it ended up buying a Astor local to me in the end could not be arsed with the journey good to see it went to a member

[ozonehostile]

Went to do the cambelt, tightening the bolt into the cam to lock off the timing and the pulley sheared!
Currently awaiting a new cam pulley from Johnny98746975322468 before I can put it back together.

Back to using the gti6 for my 60 mile commute lo

Saw this last month on Auto Trader had first refusal on it ended up buying a Astor local to me in the end could not be arsed with the journey good to see it went to a member

Aha it was affair mission to get it but glad I did after viewing a few local nails lol

[dturbodani]

I'll post mine up when i get around to sorting out a wash on it current projects 307 Rapier HDI 3 Door XSI conversion with Sp arches,206 xsi Hdi Full Sp and a 85 XR2...

[ozonehostile]

Well this cambelt malarkey just gets more and more infuriating!

Whatever ape broke the cam pulley in the first place has also damaged the threads in the head for locking off the cam. Yet another stupid repair I'm going to have to do because of some mong. I hate buying a new car to find shit like this.

[Matt-Rallye]

Well this cambelt malarkey just gets more and more infuriating!

Whatever ape broke the cam pulley in the first place has also damaged the threads in the head for locking off the cam. Yet another stupid repair I'm going to have to do because of some mong.  I hate buying a new car to find shit like this.

Get at it and get it done   stop wrecking that GTi!!

[ozonehostile]

Well this cambelt malarkey just gets more and more infuriating!

Whatever ape broke the cam pulley in the first place has also damaged the threads in the head for locking off the cam. Yet another stupid repair I'm going to have to do because of some mong.  I hate buying a new car to find shit like this.

Get at it and get it done   stop wrecking that GTi!!

Got the new pulley from Johnny on last night and the new belt, put the stupid thing back together now lol 

Fair play to the 6 though, hasn't missed a beat doing 60 miles a day, returning nearly 35mpg and just being generally  amazing to drive. Kind of don't want to get back in a diesel now

[Matt-Rallye]

So the astor is fixed? wanna do mine next week then?

[ozonehostile]

Finally finished the cambelt, new cam pulley via johnnyallthenumbers (thanks again mate) new aux belt, fresh total oil , new fuel and air filter which were both very black, fresh gear oil and some ultra low mileage injectors to replace the knackered ones. All good or so I thought, driving it home earlier the engine management light came on and it spluttered then died. First time ever I've broken down in a 306!

Looks like the injector seat on number 3 has been damaged by the injector blowing for so long under previous ownership. Absolute ball ache! Have to wait until Monday now to borrow an injector seat cutting tool so back to the 6. Beginning to really dislike this car already

[Matt]

Sound like a right pita! I'd just stop trying to fix things....

Looks bloody mint though mate! Top buy there!

[ozonehostile]

It's one of those things where I wish I'd never have opened the bonnet Just leave it until the cambelt snapped and put a new engine in, feels like it would be quicker lol.

Oh well, most of the preventative maintenance will be sorted once the injectors are done and I can enjoy modifying it instead of fixing

[ozonehostile]

So long story short, the hdi has had it. 

Two weeks of chasing a fuelling issue resulted in taking a day off work, changing every sensor and relay in the fuel circuit to try and solve the issue of cutting out under full load. 

End of the day and the only things that hadn't been changed were the hp pump itself and still with the same problem. Thought to try my other set of injectors back in since they were tappy yet they definitely worked before, old injectors fitted, all good, no leaking took it up the road to see if it solved the cutting out problem, made it about 500 yards and bang! Big puff of exhaust smoke, very loud metallic death rattle from the head. It now only turns over under full throttle just to get idle and when it does there are some very bad noises coming from within the head. 

Possible conclusions:

Replacing the cam pulley put the timing too advanced by thousandths of a mm, just enough to kiss a valve at high rpm which resulted in bending then snapping 

Or, injectors were the fuel problem, only 3 seemed to be fuelling properly and one was possibly causing a massive hot spot in the head with the numerous test drives trying to see if changing fuel system components had fixed it. 

The fault flagged up on pp2k was intermittent fuel pressure monitoring fault (leak) which could be anything from the pressure regulator, fuel pump relay, rail sensor...  

Looking for a new engine now

[Ruan]

Remember these can't and won't bend valves, they just break rockers, bet if you pull the rocker cover you'll just find smashed rockers.

[ozonehostile]

Remember these can't and won't bend valves, they just break rockers, bet if you pull the rocker cover you'll just find smashed rockers.

Ah good point dude, I'll whip the cover off later

[Paul_13]

I had that same fault code. Turned out to be hp pump

[MY95]

Why cant they bend valves Ruan? Surely any engine can cant they?

[zx_volcane]

oh man, not another dead hdi :/

crack on and drop another lump in

[Midnightclub]

Why cant they bend valves Ruan? Surely any engine can cant they?

I'd assume it's due to the rockers being weaker than the valves, easiest point will break first. Just a guess though

[ozonehostile]

Rockers are designed to break to save the valves on these aren't they?

Anyway I've hopefully sourced an engine that I can get next week sometime, swap a few bits over out of my box of stage 2 parts :p

[Ruan]

Why cant they bend valves Ruan? Surely any engine can cant they?

I'd assume it's due to the rockers being weaker than the valves, easiest point will break first. Just a guess though

Bingo - remember these have the valves positioned directly upright and the rockers will be the first thing to fail, they've got pretty thick valve stems, you'd struggle to bend them, because the force is in it's strongest axis.

I've seen XUDs which from memory have the same diameter valve stems rather than bend anything, smash the cam into 3 pieces and the valve be in perfect condition.

[Toms306]

Seems to work well too, valves were perfect on the belt snapper I broke, just two broken rockers. Surprised me tbh!

[Midnightclub]

That's nice to know, not so concerned about a belt swap now

[Ruan]

Not ideal mind, you'll end up with bits of rocker all in the oil, I'd not recommend leaving it, it still makes a right old mess as invariably it's all flying round at high speed when it fails and bits go everywhere!!!