Hyundai Verna CRDi SX/ABS update.. 15000 kms Sep 2008

[amitwadhwa]

Alright folks,

Here is another review after clocking (rocking) 15k kms..

About 5k has been long drives,
including a to-and-from chennai trip from Bangalore - 9 hours, Mysore, Ooty, Masinagudi, Kerala and so on..

Car - white color, black 3M Cooling glass.
Max speed taken up to - 160kph - no roads around for anything farther than that.
Fuel efficiency - City - 11-12kpl
Highway - 16-17 kpl.

I have actually stopped bothering about mileage now, the turbo drives me insane on jack-rabbit starts on green signals.

Service 1: 1000kms - Rs. 110
Service 2: 9300kms - Rs. 5000

Minor accident - after 3 months of ownership - self-induced while reversing the car, hit a concrete pole, replaced fender, dented/painted door
and claimed insurance for 12k, had to pay 800 bucks.

My take on the car so far:

Steering/handling - Car moves slightly towards left if the steering is left alone..
AC - rocks.. just leave it on auto climate control, change the air intake to recirculate, and leave it alone.

Quality of interiors - very good, ample space for keys/ID cards/change etc etc.
..but the 2-tone dash and door sides etc. should have been reversed or should have been darker.
The offwhite color is at the bottom, whereas the grey is on top. So when you actually step out of the car, and your foot touches the base of the door (happens many times), you leave a dark smudge on the off-white plastic.
The plastic next to your pedals (left and right), are both off white in color, and you inevitable have a dirty interior there because of your shoes etc. Rear passengers leave your "door entrances" dirty because somehow they dont get used to taking their foot out and placing it directly on the ground, they use the door "base" instead as a support for stepping out.
The rear centre arm rest with cup holders is fantastic. Ample legroom in front as well as back..

Spending 800 bucks at a hyundai service station will clean off all these smudges (which refuse to go using normal dashboard cleaners), and leave your car shining brand new - outside as well as inside.

Turbo lag - Havent noticed, I have graduated from a petrol hatchback, so turbo diesel itself is something great for me.

In-dash Controls - Very well placed. Seat-belt sign os just a warning thing which flashes on once during ignition and then goes off. They could do with an indicator which doesnt go off till you fasten your seatbealts. Music player shipped as standard needs a USB input. I exchanged the OEM one for a sony system just for that reason (during purchase). And it just doesnt blend as well in the dash.
Individual controllable a/c vents are good, since I need the air blowing into my face always, whereas my wife hates it .

Electronic rear mirrors - always great! Could do with defoggers ? They tend to get very foggy in the rains and you have to have to roll down your windows to clean them up!

Wheels: Running on OEM's and they are alright. I will get a better set once these wear out. Nowadays this model comes with alloy wheels as standard :( that too at 50k lesser than I paid for the car. You get a fully loaded diesel in bangalore now for 9.3L OTR, I spent 9.75 or something last year, and didnt even get Alloys!

Noise levels inside the cabin: Engine-wise - Zero. Rolling down the window, you can hear the wheels.

Additions this car could do with :
---------------------------------------
- Rear Wiper
- USB provision for the Music System
- Controls on the steering
- All other features such as electrically foldable mirrors which come with the i20.
- Airbags
- Arm rest on navigators seat as well - Wife's complaint
- Height adjustable seat belts
- Telescopic Steering Wheel

I think the i20 has raised the benchmark for cars with all the goodies it ships with.


Some Issues I need advice on
-------------------------------
1) I have also lately noticed that anything placed in the cabby holes in the car - (all the pockets provided) vibrates to some extent.
I am sure this was not the case earlier, any suggestions ?

2) The front right wheel gives me some type of feedback nowadays.
Its hard to describe, but anyone who has had a kinetic honda will know what I am talking about. Every few months the "bushes" on the front forks used to get broken, and the bike used to make a distinct deep click sound in potholes.
Its the same feeling now, I dont know if its from the steering wheel assembly or the suspensions. It happens once in every 3 or so speedbreakers, every 3 or so fast accelerations from stand-still, and every 5 or so potholes.
Maybe a play in the steering wheel ? Or loose bolts in the suspension ?
I took it to Advaith Hyundai at Bangalore, he took my car up on those jazzy hydraulic lifts, checked everything and said its all ok. Took me for a drive, and my car refused to give him that problem. I had to come back looking like a fool.
Any suggestions on this one ? I am positive its something that will develop further and suddenly break later in the narrowest of turns at a respectable speed sometime. and then ill have to shell out a big chunk of money.

3) The in-dash temperature indicator - part of the trip meter, shows the wrong temperature, or so it seems to me, because it went up to 40 Celcius this summer once, and I know we havent yet had those temperatures here.
Even nowadays when the temperature is about 27 degrees, it shows up 32-34 sometimes.

4) The DTE indicator starts flashing and goes off after the car has about 65 running kms left in the fuel tank, that scares the hell out of you when you are already hunting for a petrol bunk. Pushing a car that heavy in rush hour traffic,
without a power steering is going to be a pain, and I hope I never face that situation.

5) How many miles can I expect out of the OEM battery ?
I want to be sure it doesnt just suddenly die out on me, while waiting on a red signal, and the car is switched off. Again, pushing it will not be nice.
Its happened to me before, but in an Alto, which is fairly easy to self-push-jump-in-and-start.
Any sort of battery health indicators out there ?


Also, here is what I think about the Bangalore authority on roads and traffic, whatever that is.. . This is my way of thanking them for the atrocities my car has had to endure, in their quest for flyovers / underpasses / Drainage rebuilds, and providing village-like roads or rather no roads as diversions. The irony is the amount of road tax we pay here is way higher than other parts of the country which have far better roads and traffic monitoring. Also, by the time they finish their one-way flyover projects (which doesnt ever take less than a couple of years) the traffic increases by so much that its already time for them to rebuild again.

I recently was passing through a village on the outskirts of Bangalore, and they had a board called "Grameen Sadak Yojana", and they had spectacular concrete roads ! Why ????
ok, I have nothing against them having good roads, but why not in Bangalore ? Maybe they can put up a board saying : "Urbanized-Bangalore-Trying-to-reurbanize-but-failing". I know there are lots of hard-core Bangalore fans on this forum. Please excuse my thoughts you guys. But thats how I feel, and a big chunk of friends I have here feel about the way things are handled in this place.

[amitwadhwa]

Looks like I offended all Bangalore folks here.
Or did I post to the wrong thread ?
Need I be separating my questions from my ownership review ?
Normally a lot of assistance comes pouring in for technical questions

[vikrantj]

Amit,

A quick thought that right wheel feedback might be something to with wheel alignement. Especially check the wheel caster number in the alignment.

Rgds
Vikrant

[amitwadhwa]

Originally Posted by vikrantj

Especially check the wheel caster number in the alignment.

What's a wheel caster number ? and what value should it be ?

[pras.oct25]

@amitwadhwa - Just got back from a trip to bang. Covered almost 1000km totally over a period of 3 days. The car has run around 9k km now and the journey was mind blowing. My replies to your queries are in bold.

Originally Posted by amitwadhwa

Some Issues I need advice on
-------------------------------
1) I have also lately noticed that anything placed in the cabby holes in the car - (all the pockets provided) vibrates to some extent.
I am sure this was not the case earlier, any suggestions ?
Yes this is something I find when you place things in the door pockets. They vibrate like crazy and you get very irritated. I'm not too sure if this was present right from the beginning, but if you check out my initial ownership thread, I have mentioned that I found my engine vibration level much higher than when I bought the car.
2) The front right wheel gives me some type of feedback nowadays.
Its hard to describe, but anyone who has had a kinetic honda will know what I am talking about. Every few months the "bushes" on the front forks used to get broken, and the bike used to make a distinct deep click sound in potholes.
This is something I have experienced as well. Mild feedback on the steering wheel on certain poor roads and its rather disconcerting. I'm guessing that it may be a wheel alignment/balancing issue, cause I have gone to hyundai a nmber of times regarding these issues and like you said they keep checking the underside of the car and telling me that things are fine. Guess we should try having rotation and balancing done for the tires. Also you mentioned dragging to one side. This should be rectified by proper alignment work on the tires, and dont worry too much about it cause our Indian roads have a natural slope which pulls the car to one side.

3) The in-dash temperature indicator - part of the trip meter, shows the wrong temperature, or so it seems to me, because it went up to 40 Celcius this summer once, and I know we havent yet had those temperatures here.
Even nowadays when the temperature is about 27 degrees, it shows up 32-34 sometimes.
Not too sure about this one. I live in chennai, and any temperature that is high is believable.
4) The DTE indicator starts flashing and goes off after the car has about 65 running kms left in the fuel tank, that scares the hell out of you when you are already hunting for a petrol bunk. Pushing a car that heavy in rush hour traffic,
without a power steering is going to be a pain, and I hope I never face that situation.
The DTE is designed to start blinking at around 60 to 65km. Dont worry too much about this, cause it should last you the distance. Not to forget that at times when your driving conditions improve, the dte tends to increase as well. So you may actually get more than the 65km that it is stating.

Hope my answers helped you to some extent. For more info on that vibration stuff and all that you can check out my ownership thread, cause I had posted a whole long story of my experience with hyundai there. Before you ask them to take your car apart and stuff to check the steering make sure you verify your tires and all that, cause they will leave behind all kinds of marks on your dashboard in the process of taking it apart to check the steering, and thats just sad. As you mentioned, the beige is very conducive to dirt and scratch marks, so all the more reason to be careful.

[amitwadhwa]

Thanks for your inputs... I did visit the Hyundai Service center over the weekend to see if they have any solutions for me..
I also got my wheel alignment done, but the problem seems to persist..

Here is my interaction with them.

- Regarding the wheel feedback, the service advisor gave me 2 options, both of which he will "have" to explore before coming to a conclusion.
1. The universal Joint of the steering wheel has worn out, and so is giving that noise. How can that happen in 15k kms ? Maybe if I were driving in a "sine-wave" fashion that would happen.. lol
2. Or.. one of the engine rubber mountings has worn out.. again, 15k kms ?

Do you folks think I should take it to him to check out the steering assembly and/or the engine mountings ?

- The in-dash temperature indicator - "That is inaccurate sir, please ignore it. It is just there for the car to decide how much to warm up the air mixture to... eg. for starting in cold weather". LOL.. do they show the user what temperature is being decided for ignition ?? Explanation for the wrong temperature was - the sensor is mounted next to the engine.. (and it shows only 3-4 degrees difference ?).

- The DTE indicator starts flashing and goes off after the car has about 65 running kms left in the fuel tank - "Yes sir, maybe you didnt have any fuel left, so it could not calculate" ... hmph!

- How many miles can I expect out of the OEM battery ? - "totally depends on your usage sir".. when asked how about in normal usage ? the answer was again.. sir, that depends on how normal your usage is.. when I defined "normal" to him (sarcastically) - I start my car once or twice a day, honk for 8-10 times a day for 1 second, and play my music system for 3 hours a day with the car engine running, headlights are on for 2 hours a day. brake lights are on for 30 minutes or more a day, He finally said, "sir we can't calculate like that, it totally depends on your usage"

We have clowns for service guys here. I dont know where I should take my car to