I hope this is the right place to ask this...
I'm looking for a used car under £7k to take me, the missus, bikes and junk up and down motorways at the weekend. It needs to be cheap to run, comfy on motorways, have ABS, Air Con and 5 doors. I've seen quite a few 306 2.0 Meridian's with about 35k - 45k on them at a Car Supermarket. Can anyone let me know if these diesel's are a bad/good buy? Or, the 1.8 petrols? Any experience / advice appreictaed. Thanks.
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Taken from Car-by-Car breakdown:
"1.8 8-valve XU petrol is the worst engine and many were fitted with the wrong ECU chip leading to failed emissions tests."
www.honestjohn.co.uk/index.php?url=/carbycar/index...m
I don't have any personal experience of these (and you shouldn't trust me anyway, I drive an Alfa out of choice, paid for with my own money!) but I'm sure someone will be along in a minute.
May be worth your while to use the Forum Search (top right of your screen) to look for threads, especially in the Technical forum.
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Sorry I can't help on the 1.8 or 2 litre models but I've had a 1.6 litre one for about 4 years now and have found it to be excellent in both town and motorway (even when loaded down with about 100kilo of scuba kit!).
The more recent 306's have 2 year service intervals which keeps the cost down and even though mine is 5 years old the most expensive thing I have needed doing is the breaks (and that's with it always being serviced by a main dealer).
The only real complaint I have is the rear mud flaps are very low and tend to scrape on the ground when you go over speed ramps (particularly when loaded up).
HTH
Anne
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Perfect, it'll be lugging scuba gear as well! Is it quite economical on the motorways?
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The 1.6 is reasonably economical. I can get from Essex to Penzance (350ish miles) on just over 3/4 of a tank of petrol with the air conditioning on some of the time and doing between 80 and 90 on the M4/M5.
The one thing I notice with my fuel gauge is the first half of the tank goes quite quickly but the second half takes forever plus filling it at half full costs a lot less than half of what it costs when the red light is on.
The dive kit includes 8 7 litre tanks plus about 30kg of lead between us (including spares) and all the usual other bits you need for a weekend away. We tend to keep the weightbelts under my passengers feet to reduce the amount of mud flap drag over speed ramps since there is a lot of them in my area.
Anne
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And wouldn't a "2.0D" be the one with an HDi engine? If so it's a cracker of an engine!
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Personally, I'd take the 7 grand a buy a Xantia (oh, but then I am biased!) - I had a look on Autotrader, and you could get a 2000X HDi 110 in the mileage range you were looking at. Bigger, more comfortable, will still do 45mpg + on the m-way, can be hustled along the country roads pretty well (but you can't keep up with an S2000 through the really twisty bits as I found out at the weekend!) but, crucially, if you cart lots of heavy gear about, comes with self levelling suspension - no more scraped mudflaps, lights shining at the stars etc.
RichardW
Is it illogical? It must be Citroen....
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I have found the opposite with the fuel gauge on my 306 D. I can do 400 miles from full to half full, then only a further 250 'til it's empty. It averages 49 mpg.
One thing I'd say about 306's is that I don't think they're built very well, and there seem to be a few back-roomers having problems. I used to find spares prices difficult to come to terms with until I discovered our local German, Swedish and French.
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You will mean a 306 Meridian HDi 90. While I have owned my T-reg it has only gone from 18K to 30K, but I have nursed it back to good health so it will move when I ask it to, and I *can* get over 60mpg. Even with scuba gear you should manage 50.
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How have you nursed your HDI back to health? My 52 plate C5 doesn't have exceptional fuel consumption round town or on the motorway.
Ben
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Ben - When I bought the car I think it had been fairly idle for a while, though it had a full history. It gets new filter and semi-synth every 6K, and small doses of conditioner (~30ml) every couple of fills. Also took 1 cm of slack out of the accelerator cable, which improved response. Runs like a dream at the moment (new oil) - can only just hear the motor running (from inside!)
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