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i have a 2000 306 2.0 hdi estate, 62k miles due an mot soon.... ive not owned the car long, but i know they are prone to rear axle problems.
how do you spot the problem, theres no knocking or banging going over bumps but the driver side does make a noise when braking hard for a few seconds, and also sits alittle more in at the top i think than passenger side, i was more thinking it was the brakes as the disks have seen better days, but worth mentioning just incase
i have a few things to do for the mot, id happily do them, hopefully mot it then maybe the axle in future, but if the axle is on the way out right now, ill probably weigh it in
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its 18 years old and if its never had an axle it will need one, if one wheel has noticably more camber than another then its probably beyond saving and you need a replacement axle.
no reason to weigh it in, they will last another 10 years if assembled correctly.
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looks abit lower on driver side to
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25-04-2018, 08:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 25-04-2018, 08:43 PM by carlukepeugeot.)
Hard to tell from that to be honest. At the end of the day if the car is driving OK and the suspension is still basically working at the back - oh and if it isn't rubbing on the arch liners - then there is no immediate need to panic. I bought my last car at 106k and the axle was creaking but still working. Wheels went in a bit at the top and eventually when I was changing tyres I ended up going for 175 rather than 185 as a 185 rubbed a touch. I drove that until the axle went sold one winter.
I used to put the handbrake on tight and let the clutch out in 1st then reverse to bounce it back to life a bit ! I also remember in the dead of winter giving some friends of my wife a lift home and the axle was basically solid. They were being chucked around on bumps like nobodies business!
I think I got about another 20k out of it after I really started noticing it. Are you handy at all? It isn't a bad job if you just replace with a refurb one. You can even just unbolt the backplates and hang them off the underside of the car then bolt them back on to the new axle, to avoid needing to worry about undoing brake pipes etc. I didn't do that however - it didn't occur to me until someone mentioned it to me - I used it as an opportunity to freshen up the wheel cylinders, pipes etc anyway.
If it's driving fine and not creaking or banging and if there is not excessive play that an MOT would notice (often it doesn't show up as play as the torsion bars hold everything pretty tight even when the axle bearings are knackered) then just keep driving it. It may last a good while yet.
Just to add - I rarely consider whether it is worth spending a little on a car in terms of the value of the car and rather the cost of replacing it. If it was a choice between £500 on a car worth £300 to get 2 more years use out of it for example, that is still far better value that scrapping it and spending £2k on a new car that will then probably cost a couple hundred a year in running repairs anyway (especially if a more recent car with more electronics, sensors, lower profile tyres etc.) You need to consider cost of replacement, depreciation and running costs.
