I've got a 2.1 td that I have had from six months old, it is an R 98 and I bought it with 10,000 miles and it has now done just short of 60,000.
The battery and radiator are original, and I've never had problems with the indiactor stalks or front discs.
It has had one pair of rear discs and pads, and the handbrake is very poor, but always manaages to pass the M.O.T.
The O/S coil spring broke two years ago, apparently a problem paculiar to the 2.1td.
I had speedo problems, and it turned out to be the "interface box" found under and behind the glovebox, £40 for that, and easy to fix if you are agile and can twist into unusual positions.
The most recent failure has been the flap valve under the pollen filter, apparently this assists the a/c to keep the temperature correct, and when it strips its teeth, it presents itself with a ticking behind the glove box. This required even more agility, a torch and scuffed knuckles to disconnect the electrical plug and stop the clicking. I haven't repaired this and don't intend to as there appears to be no ill effects with the a/c up to now.
Apart from normal consumerable service items, nothing else.
Reggie
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I think I meant "peculiar". Whoops
Reggie
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I've had two as company cars. One was an R plate 1.9 TD LX, followed by a facelift model W plate 2.0 HDi 90 LX. The R plate I put about 70k on and the W plate about 20k.
To drive, it's a lovely car. Very comfortable, very quiet even in base-ish diesel trim, and with probably the best ride quality of any car I've driven. I also found build quality much better than the reviews suggest. The first car was getting on for 100k when it went back and nothing had fallen off trim-wise and there were only the tiniest squeaks here and there.
90 bhp barely moves a 406, so both were pretty gutless. That said, the HDi unit felt a lot livelier than the XUTD due to a wider useable "power band" and less lag. Much more economical as well - the XUTD could be coaxed down to 35 mpg without too much effort. Pretty poor for a car that struggles to do a ton flat out on level ground, and won't hold 80 up a motorway incline with more than one passenger in the car (yes it was that slow). The HDi did 45-50 mpg however it was driven.
Unfortunately, both cars were pretty unreliable, mostly due to electrical faults. This is what went wrong:
R reg (over 3 years and 70,000 miles - I got the car with 26k on it already):
At about 40k, the rear crank oil seal started weeping and contaminated the clutch plates. This caused a nasty clutch judder initially, followed by the inevitable clutch slip.
The instrument panel was replaced to cure jumping needles, erratic gauge readouts and most worryingly, miles being added on to the odometer when the car was stationary.
The central locking would sometimes refuse to unlock the driver's door.
The immobiliser left me stranded twice
The stereo twice refused to turn off and had to have its fuse removed to avoid draining the battery.
W reg (over 8 months and 20,000 miles):
Would "surge" sometimes by itself on hard throttle. Letting the throttle up would see flat out acceleration continue. The dealer never sorted this one.
Idle was very erratic on this one compared to the others on the fleet. Seemed to "miss" a beat every now and again.
All manner of problems with the multiplex wiring. The horn would go off at random, the indicators would go on strike intermittently and the radio would turn itself up full whenever it felt like it.
The fuel computer became very erratic and the car would run out with 40 miles of range still showing.
Despite all the problems, I still enjoyed both cars, and as I said they are lovely cars to drive. It's also worth mentioning that the dealer compounded the problems by taking forever to put them right, and in the case of the surging, erratic idle and wiring brainstorms on the HDI, failing completely. Given competent repairs and servicing, I suspect the experience would have been even better.
I could still be tempted to buy one with my own money, but it wouldn't be a 90bhp diesel.
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Thanks, at least that answers one of my questions about the engine, I wasn't sure how much the 20bhp between the rapier hdi and the 110bhp hdi would make a difference, that pushes me to go for the 110 anyhow.
Anyone have experience of how the petrol engine runs? To be honest, so long as i can cruise at 80/90 along the motorway, and have fairly decent acceleration at 30-50 i'm generaly happy. having test driven the 2.0 petrol this seemed good, unless people have other experiences (didnt really get to any decent hills on the test drive).
Keep your thoughts / experiences coming folks!
Gav.
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When I was looking to buy mine, it was apparent that the 90bhp XUD 1.9 struggled a bit with the weight it was moving compared to a 405.
I assume that you are looking more towards an HDI than an XUD? My 2.1 does have sufficient power 110bhp, but I can't remember the torque figures(and will pull an 1100kg caravan at more than the national speed limit if required perfectly happily and quietly) and on average does about 39 to 43mpg on mixed driving. It doesn't seem to better 46/47mpg though. My only criticism of the 2.1 is that as DP said of his 1.9, it has a fairly narrow power band in that nothing much happens until you get to 1800 rpm then you're away.
Reggie
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Yep, would have been looking at an HDi, there seems to be the "rapier" version (90bhp) or the 110bhp version, guessing the 110bhp would be ok, and the 90 somewhat lacking?
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I had the 2 litre petrol and it never felt underpowered to me, although clearly it was no sports car (and nor would you expect it to be I guess)
I think though there may have been a new 2 litre petrol unit introduced around the time of the facelift and mine was one of the first with this new engine so a pre-facelift car may be different. Not 100% confident of this though!
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I'll be getting a 99/00 model year car, which i think is post-facelift (...just for the '99), so i guess same engine. it won't be the HPi as i think they're only the very latest 406s?
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OK, on investigation, both cars i'm considering are post-facelift (i.e. after march 99 built cars), so they have 20k mile service interval instead of 9. the 2 litre petrol engine is a little, but not hugely, changed, still a 4 pot 16v jobbie, but post facelift they generate 137bhp insread of 135, imagine no-one can tell the difference there!
They did, however, introduce a turbo version of the 2.0 petrol, giving an extra 15bhp, and 3-5mpg less, neither of the cars i'm looking at have a turbo (probably a good thing!)
Cheers,
Gav.
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