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Right, I'm in the middle of a nightmare. A few weeks ago a coolant pipe split on my car and due to circumstances I couldn't stop before it overheated. A lifelong friend is an ex Peugeot mechanic (hooray some might say) and I'm ex Nissan, The coolant expansion bottle was full of black mayonnaise so logically thinking I steered the diagnosis towards head gasket and he seemed to agree although it wasn't something he'd seen on this engine before. We did the work and ran the vehicle up and everything seemed okay apart from trying to clean all this gunk out of the cooling system which was proving to be a right mission. Due to having to wait on a couple of small parts he's since gone and today is the first time I've driven the vehicle (literally less than a mile) there seemed to be more gunk than ever in the expansion bottle after I got back to the house so I had a thought and dipped the oil, it was pretty much empty,,,,,,,,, ****! So basically it's dumped all the oil back into the cooling system. This nearly reduced me to tears! Still with me? Thanks for your time :-) Now,,,,, this is the problem. I don't expect something for nothing and my mate normally cleans windows at £150 per day. The parts list even at trade price was ridiculous and he asked for £350 as it was a few days including head skim ect to do. I was expecting a little less but the fact is we're all grown ups now and he has kids and mortgage to pay for, so I was kind of happy with that. He's aware and is gutted and we're putting out heads together trying to figure out what the fault is. Another spanner to the plan is another mate more local who I've only known a couple of years is offering to pull it apart for free. I know I'm going to have to grow a pair and speak with my mate in regards to the money owed but I just don't know how to approach it? Firstly I was wondering if anyone has experienced this fault before on this engine and what might the problem be? It's the 1.4 HDI from 2006 and I believe this is used on lots of different cars, ford, citroen peugeot. Secondly I do understand cars and don't want to get into a pull it apart change something put it together situation only to find it's still the same. After looking on the bay I'm leaning towards just swapping out the engine with a scrap vehicle. Thirdly what would you say to your mate of 25 years? We haven't spoken about the money side of things yet but would you pay full amount/something for his efforts/nothing? He did travel backwards forwards, sorted out parts, took head away for skim ect,,,, Told you this was a mare lol!!! My thinking is just write off the engine as there's possibly and internal crack in an oil way/water jacket that will never be diagnosed, I do want to keep the car as It's only done 60,000 and to replace it will cost thousands not the few hundred that an engine will be. This is my longest post ever but I actually feel better about the situation now I've written it down, I'm not going to lose a lifelong mate for the sake of a few hundred sheets. Thoughts and opinions if you will. PS, anyone want a 206 1.4 HDI. Good little runner for a fair price