Palio Stile 1.6 Sport - 700km review - Page 2 - Team-BHP

Thingummy · 9th July 2007, 07:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by BUSA

Very nice review and very very nice pics to follow it, your car looks very very good

Is it the GT 4-12?

Thanks Busa. The SW is a CS1204B

The entire set-up is as follows -

Head Unit
Pio 7950UB - The USB port was an absolute must for me - The controls are a little clunky and take some getting-used-to. Sound quality is neat, and EQ function is pretty powerful. None of the jazzy displays i've seen on other unit though.

Front Speakers
JBL GTO507 - Very clear sound - I like them. These are driven by the amp

Rear Speakers
JBL CS3196 - Very weak sound - Output from these speakers is overwhelmed by the sw bass, and the front output. Not at all happy with these. Should i have gone for GTO937, or should i drive these speakers from an amp as well? Currently they are being driven directly by the HU

Sub
JBL CS1204B - Very rich sound. I am not a huge BOOM fan, and at low-medium volume levels the o/p from the SW is rich and deep. Very nice.

Amp
JBL CS60.4 - Two channels driving the front compos, two more bridged and driving the SW - Should see if it makes sense to drive the rear setup from the other two channels, and go in for a 300.1 to drive the sub - but thats for later though.

Overall very happy with the sound - but unhappy about the front bias - Its almost like the rear speakers are non-existent :-(

uttamc · 9th July 2007, 10:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thingummy

Got it from the same guy who did the leather stuff - Ceralli. Not sure if they have a presence in Mumbai. Actually was looking for a complete central floor console, with storage, armrest etc, and this came closest - There is no storage, but the armrest is a huge help - There is a mild inconvenience while changing to 2nd (there is sufficient gap between the gear level and the armrest, despite which the gear change action has to change from the normal action), but i don't use it within the City - On the highways, its an excellent setup providing perfect support - there is no obstruction either as the gears mostly end up in 3rd 4th or 5th ...

This is quite nice... it looks like they've attached a rod between the drivers and co-passengers seat. Is that correct?

Could you post a couple of more pictures (maybe from the back seat as well) cuz i'll have to show them around to get it constructed.

Thanks.

moralfibre · 9th July 2007, 10:38

Nice review Thingummy, the car looks splendid! Take good care of her.

Thingummy · 9th July 2007, 10:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by uttamc

This is quite nice... it looks like they've attached a rod between the drivers and co-passengers seat. Is that correct?

Could you post a couple of more pictures (maybe from the back seat as well) cuz i'll have to show them around to get it constructed.

Thanks.

Sure Uttam. Will post pics from all angles once i get back home tonight, but it might not be very useful because the entire assembly is wrapped in leather now. Maybe an explanation of how they did it will help. Its fit only to the driver's seat - They basically got the armrest made elsewhere with a hole at the back and foam all around, took the seat frame to a metal worker, got a tubular rod welded to the backrest frame, the arm rest was fit into this rod, and swivels with at least 2-3" gap from the front passenger seat

Thingummy · 9th July 2007, 10:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by mclaren1885

Raghu a very nice car you have there. So how about getting it to the drive this Saturday?

Thanks Rahul. Making it to the weekend drive is looking bleak - Will know for sure by Thursday. Would love to join you guys for future meets though ..

cheers!
raghu

BUSA · 9th July 2007, 13:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thingummy

Head Unit
Pio 7950UB - The USB port was an absolute must for me - The controls are a little clunky and take some getting-used-to. Sound quality is neat, and EQ function is pretty powerful. None of the jazzy displays i've seen on other unit though.

Amp
JBL CS60.4 - Two channels driving the front compos, two more bridged and driving the SW - Should see if it makes sense to drive the rear setup from the other two channels, and go in for a 300.1 to drive the sub - but thats for later though.

Overall very happy with the sound - but unhappy about the front bias - Its almost like the rear speakers are non-existent :-(

Well thingummy when you have gone for JBL GTO 507c at the front you should have gone for GTO 937 at the rears, it would have been a whole lot better. The 60.4 wont do justice to the subwoofer, you should have gone for a GTO 75.4 if you intended to bridge it with the sub, but now i think you can use it this way and when you plan to spend then buy a Mono amp like the 300.1 or 600.1 and amp the sub woofer using it. With the 60.4 you can amp the fronts and rears.

The Pioneer 7950 is a very good HU, though you need time to get used to it but once you have its simply

How much did you get it for, can you post pics and prices of all Ice equipments, i bought the 7950 for 9.5k grey.

The reason you are unhappy about front bias is that the fronts are too powerful and the rears are too weaks, you should have gone for the GTO937 or better still a set of compos at the rear but that would be extending your budget quite alot.

bottle · 9th July 2007, 13:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thingummy

Thanks Rahul. Making it to the weekend drive is looking bleak - Will know for sure by Thursday. Would love to join you guys for future meets though ..

cheers!
raghu

do try to make it if theres any chance, would love to check out your car and not sure when another similar multicity meet will be held

akroy · 9th July 2007, 13:58

Nice LTO and nice pics too....Your car looks cute specially the handrest (driver side)...

Abhi

djay99 · 9th July 2007, 14:00

Whats the FE of your 1.6 dude?

moralfibre · 9th July 2007, 14:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by djay99

Whats the FE of your 1.6 dude?

Check post number 14 on this thread. He has mentioned it there.

Thingummy · 9th July 2007, 20:57

Busa, Here's a pic of the HU - The cost of the setup was standard JBL prices for everything with a 10% discount, and Rs 10K for the HU. Came to Rs 38k overall, with the wiring, rear mdf board and installation charges. Preetham, from Sound Factor was amazingly helpful with this, turning up on a Sunday when his place was closed for renovation.

I think i'll live with the front bias for now - and get a mono amp in the next upgrade budget.

Uttam, Here's a couple of pics showing how the armrest is fit -

Thingummy · 16th July 2007, 08:10

This is the story so far - I'd done around 700kms in the past two
weeks with my new stile 1.6, and figured i'd do a quick weekend day
trip to belur and halebid, chomp up around 400kms, and drop it for the
first service come Monday. Everything was great - the drive from
Bangalore to Hassan was fantastic. The car was planted on the road
around the curves, the revs were smooth and i had probably the best
drive of my life. We reached Hassan - stopped for lunch, and headed
onwards towards Halebid first and Belur next, because theres a lot
more to see in Halebid than in Belur, so we needed to make sure that
we had enough time for that. There were four of us in my car, and
there were 4 more in another car, the Hyundai Accent. The road to
Halebid isn't particularly good, but i didn't expect a huge rock bang
in the middle of the road - this rock was the type that is used for
foundation construction, and probably one of the lorries or something
that was carrying some material dropped it there by accident. Anyway,
there it was, the rock, just around a bend, too late to avert, and i
just went over it hoping that it wouldn't scrape the underbody. It did
better than scrape, there was a huge jolt, and an immediate smell of
petrol. We were sure that the petrol tank was ripped open -
immediately stopped the car, looked for underbody damage - and
thankfully didn't see any obvious spillage. There was however a huge
dent in the tank. Without an option we limped to Halebid which was by
then around 4-5kms away. We parked the car there for sometime, and
then headed to Belur (17kms away) which came recommended by people
around as the place to get a checkup done because there was a whole
row of engineering works, welders (if the tank needed to be welded)
and some auto mechanics as well.

We started the car, it started without a problem, there was again no
obvious spillage of petrol around the parked spot (and we were already
living on the edge if the tank had indeed been cut) However, on the
drive to Belur, for the next 17kms, there was still the smell of
petrol - and this was when i called the Manipal Motors 24 hours
helpline. Told them that there was a huge impact with my tank, the
fuel guage had gone down to zero, i wasn't sure if this meant we had
lost fuel (there should have been at least 30 litres in the tank
still) or if the guage had conked out because of the impact, and that
we needed immediate assistance from any FIAT service center close by.
Manipal were severely apologetic that they couldn't send their
assistance personnel out of Bangalore, they weren't aware of any FIAT
country wide assistance number, that Auto Matrix, a Mangalore based
dealer had a branch in Hassan for Tata Motors who could possible help
because they were just 30kms away. I called up Auto Matrix only to be
told that they couldn't help with FIAT vehicles. So i was pretty much
on my own, with a petrol smelling car, my wife and another couple of
tow, and the entire team of 8 people already beginning to feel
helpless. The 6 other car owners in the group, who had Marutis and
Hyundais between them, couldn't for the life of them understand why
there was no 24 hour country-wide breakdown service offered by FIAT.

I kept all my hopes on the local mechanic at Belur, spoke to the
service personnel at manipal, informed them that we were kind of in a
critical stage, and just had to check if the tank was damaged and
there was a leak somewhere. The local mechanic was a pretty
knowledgeable guy, who removed the tank after some effort, saw that
there was no damage or spillage, and decided to fit the tank back in.
This is when the problem got worse - when we tried to start the car,
it just wouldn't start, because the pump had failed. It was already
around 9pm in the night, and all along i was trying to get someone
from Manipal Motors to point me in the right direction. Finally, we
decided to tow the Palio to Hassan, and the Accent was the poor
victim. We got into Hassan with 7-8 stops in between, because the
poorly designed local tow rope (made out of bicyle tyres) kept
breaking, and required constant mending. We finally made it to Hassan
at around 2 in the night and roomed in a hotel there. All along Mr.
Sudhir from Manipal Bangalore was pretty sympathetic and tried to help
by asking us to look for the fuel cut-off switch (which to date hasnt
been found), pointing us to where the towing hook was etc

Morning in Hassan, and hopeful thoughts that the reasonably better
experience of mechanics in a city would be able to solve the problem -
no such luck however. Finally got a LTV (canter) spent a good 3 hours
loading the car into it (a 2 week old car piggybacking on a canter)
and left for Bangalore at around 2pm. The folks from Manipal were
courteous on the phone, promised to have people waiting when we
reached their service center in the night to unload the car etc.
Endured a lot of honking people, who saw some strange joy in whistling
, waving hands etc to a person who'd just had a sleepless night, was
pretty much close to dead, and was wondering how a relatively minor
problem could turn into such a big deal. There were also a couple of
cops to deal with on the way, because i've only driven cars in
Bangalore, the driver of the truck didn't know Bangalore, and between
us we didn't know how we could get to airport road without entering
roads where commercial vehicles werent allowed.

Some relief at Manipal, they at least unloaded the car (after some
strong initial argument between themselves that they weren't supposed
to accept fiat vehicles!!!) Took an inventory of items on the car (i'd
already disconnected the battery to avoid any short circuits/ sparks,
the amps and the sub-woofer) The car was put on firm ground, Mr. Arun
from Manipal was pretty courteous although he was a indica/ safari
person with almost no knowledge about FIAT vehicles. Mr. Mallappa, who
was courteous on the phone with me while helping remotely suddenly
became vicious in his phone conversation with the body shop manager,
quite literally abusing me in colorful language with me standing not
more than 20 feet away from him, able to listen every word he was
saying. I chose not to react because i was too stressed out i guess,
and just wanted to go home and get some sleep.

Final status, have to go to the service center front office today,
talk to Mr. Shivram and Mr. Sankul, explain the problem to them, see
if its big enough to get the insurance folks involved, and then settle
in for the long wait for the required parts to get shipped from Fiat
Pune, and the car to be back on the road. Do wish me the best fellow tbhpians, and let me know if you know anyone in Manipal Motors/ FIAT that can probably expediate the endless wait the repairs will probably turn out to be.

uttamc · 16th July 2007, 10:37

Oh man - this is just horrible! Hope you get your wheels on the road really soon. Fiat / Tata really need to get their act together. Being stranded with no car service?? Thats a nightmare!

deepakhon · 16th July 2007, 11:21

What a horrible experience! Hopefully you will get out of it soon. Some tbhpians have some contacts at Fiat I guess. Hopefully, people can help you out if you require parts.

bottle · 16th July 2007, 11:36

Oh my God :( Can't imagine how you must be feeling now , this is really horrible. Try calling the Fiat India helpline (1800-225-552) and talking to them and see if it can help speed things up and I think quite a few members here have some numbers.

Also this might be too late for you but recently i signed up with TVS where they offer breakdown services like towing and minor help for any car for an annual subscription rate of 1200 (which i got discounted to rs700) they are trying something like AA . Maybe you can check if there is any service like that from Bangalore.

Seems they will cover any breakdown anywhere in Tamil Nadu no matter how remote the place is. and also a few places on the expressways and Tirupathi.

9th July 2007, 13:58	#23 (permalink)
akroy Senior - BHPian Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Bangalore Posts: 1,556 View My Garage	Nice LTO and nice pics too....Your car looks cute specially the handrest (driver side)... Abhi __________________ ------------------------------------ 2003 Bajaj Caliber115 \| 2006 Alto LXi ------------------------------------

9th July 2007, 14:00	#24 (permalink)
djay99 BHPian Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Bangalore Posts: 474 View My Garage	Whats the FE of your 1.6 dude? __________________ Cheers DJ ------------------------- Getz Prime CRDi VGT (TS 175KMPH) Chevy Spark LT (TS 160KMPH)

16th July 2007, 08:10	#27 (permalink)
Thingummy BHPian Join Date: May 2007 Location: Bangalore Posts: 92	This is the story so far - I'd done around 700kms in the past two weeks with my new stile 1.6, and figured i'd do a quick weekend day trip to belur and halebid, chomp up around 400kms, and drop it for the first service come Monday. Everything was great - the drive from Bangalore to Hassan was fantastic. The car was planted on the road around the curves, the revs were smooth and i had probably the best drive of my life. We reached Hassan - stopped for lunch, and headed onwards towards Halebid first and Belur next, because theres a lot more to see in Halebid than in Belur, so we needed to make sure that we had enough time for that. There were four of us in my car, and there were 4 more in another car, the Hyundai Accent. The road to Halebid isn't particularly good, but i didn't expect a huge rock bang in the middle of the road - this rock was the type that is used for foundation construction, and probably one of the lorries or something that was carrying some material dropped it there by accident. Anyway, there it was, the rock, just around a bend, too late to avert, and i just went over it hoping that it wouldn't scrape the underbody. It did better than scrape, there was a huge jolt, and an immediate smell of petrol. We were sure that the petrol tank was ripped open - immediately stopped the car, looked for underbody damage - and thankfully didn't see any obvious spillage. There was however a huge dent in the tank. Without an option we limped to Halebid which was by then around 4-5kms away. We parked the car there for sometime, and then headed to Belur (17kms away) which came recommended by people around as the place to get a checkup done because there was a whole row of engineering works, welders (if the tank needed to be welded) and some auto mechanics as well. We started the car, it started without a problem, there was again no obvious spillage of petrol around the parked spot (and we were already living on the edge if the tank had indeed been cut) However, on the drive to Belur, for the next 17kms, there was still the smell of petrol - and this was when i called the Manipal Motors 24 hours helpline. Told them that there was a huge impact with my tank, the fuel guage had gone down to zero, i wasn't sure if this meant we had lost fuel (there should have been at least 30 litres in the tank still) or if the guage had conked out because of the impact, and that we needed immediate assistance from any FIAT service center close by. Manipal were severely apologetic that they couldn't send their assistance personnel out of Bangalore, they weren't aware of any FIAT country wide assistance number, that Auto Matrix, a Mangalore based dealer had a branch in Hassan for Tata Motors who could possible help because they were just 30kms away. I called up Auto Matrix only to be told that they couldn't help with FIAT vehicles. So i was pretty much on my own, with a petrol smelling car, my wife and another couple of tow, and the entire team of 8 people already beginning to feel helpless. The 6 other car owners in the group, who had Marutis and Hyundais between them, couldn't for the life of them understand why there was no 24 hour country-wide breakdown service offered by FIAT. I kept all my hopes on the local mechanic at Belur, spoke to the service personnel at manipal, informed them that we were kind of in a critical stage, and just had to check if the tank was damaged and there was a leak somewhere. The local mechanic was a pretty knowledgeable guy, who removed the tank after some effort, saw that there was no damage or spillage, and decided to fit the tank back in. This is when the problem got worse - when we tried to start the car, it just wouldn't start, because the pump had failed. It was already around 9pm in the night, and all along i was trying to get someone from Manipal Motors to point me in the right direction. Finally, we decided to tow the Palio to Hassan, and the Accent was the poor victim. We got into Hassan with 7-8 stops in between, because the poorly designed local tow rope (made out of bicyle tyres) kept breaking, and required constant mending. We finally made it to Hassan at around 2 in the night and roomed in a hotel there. All along Mr. Sudhir from Manipal Bangalore was pretty sympathetic and tried to help by asking us to look for the fuel cut-off switch (which to date hasnt been found), pointing us to where the towing hook was etc Morning in Hassan, and hopeful thoughts that the reasonably better experience of mechanics in a city would be able to solve the problem - no such luck however. Finally got a LTV (canter) spent a good 3 hours loading the car into it (a 2 week old car piggybacking on a canter) and left for Bangalore at around 2pm. The folks from Manipal were courteous on the phone, promised to have people waiting when we reached their service center in the night to unload the car etc. Endured a lot of honking people, who saw some strange joy in whistling , waving hands etc to a person who'd just had a sleepless night, was pretty much close to dead, and was wondering how a relatively minor problem could turn into such a big deal. There were also a couple of cops to deal with on the way, because i've only driven cars in Bangalore, the driver of the truck didn't know Bangalore, and between us we didn't know how we could get to airport road without entering roads where commercial vehicles werent allowed. Some relief at Manipal, they at least unloaded the car (after some strong initial argument between themselves that they weren't supposed to accept fiat vehicles!!!) Took an inventory of items on the car (i'd already disconnected the battery to avoid any short circuits/ sparks, the amps and the sub-woofer) The car was put on firm ground, Mr. Arun from Manipal was pretty courteous although he was a indica/ safari person with almost no knowledge about FIAT vehicles. Mr. Mallappa, who was courteous on the phone with me while helping remotely suddenly became vicious in his phone conversation with the body shop manager, quite literally abusing me in colorful language with me standing not more than 20 feet away from him, able to listen every word he was saying. I chose not to react because i was too stressed out i guess, and just wanted to go home and get some sleep. Final status, have to go to the service center front office today, talk to Mr. Shivram and Mr. Sankul, explain the problem to them, see if its big enough to get the insurance folks involved, and then settle in for the long wait for the required parts to get shipped from Fiat Pune, and the car to be back on the road. Do wish me the best fellow tbhpians, and let me know if you know anyone in Manipal Motors/ FIAT that can probably expediate the endless wait the repairs will probably turn out to be. __________________ Raghu Fiat Palio Stile 1.6 Sport - 2007 Maruti Zen - 2000

16th July 2007, 11:21	#29 (permalink)
deepakhon BHPian Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bangalore Posts: 916	What a horrible experience! Hopefully you will get out of it soon. Some tbhpians have some contacts at Fiat I guess. Hopefully, people can help you out if you require parts. __________________ Deepak Honnalli.

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9th July 2007, 10:38	#18 (permalink)
moralfibre Senior - BHPian Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Back to Pune :-) Posts: 3,180 View My Garage	Nice review Thingummy, the car looks splendid! Take good care of her.

9th July 2007, 20:57	#26 (permalink)
Thingummy BHPian Join Date: May 2007 Location: Bangalore Posts: 92	Busa, Here's a pic of the HU - The cost of the setup was standard JBL prices for everything with a 10% discount, and Rs 10K for the HU. Came to Rs 38k overall, with the wiring, rear mdf board and installation charges. Preetham, from Sound Factor was amazingly helpful with this, turning up on a Sunday when his place was closed for renovation. I think i'll live with the front bias for now - and get a mono amp in the next upgrade budget. Uttam, Here's a couple of pics showing how the armrest is fit -

16th July 2007, 10:37	#28 (permalink)
uttamc BHPian Join Date: May 2007 Location: Bombay Posts: 62	Oh man - this is just horrible! Hope you get your wheels on the road really soon. Fiat / Tata really need to get their act together. Being stranded with no car service?? Thats a nightmare!

16th July 2007, 11:36	#30 (permalink)
bottle BHPian Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Chennai Posts: 595 View My Garage	Oh my God :( Can't imagine how you must be feeling now , this is really horrible. Try calling the Fiat India helpline (1800-225-552) and talking to them and see if it can help speed things up and I think quite a few members here have some numbers. Also this might be too late for you but recently i signed up with TVS where they offer breakdown services like towing and minor help for any car for an annual subscription rate of 1200 (which i got discounted to rs700) they are trying something like AA . Maybe you can check if there is any service like that from Bangalore. Seems they will cover any breakdown anywhere in Tamil Nadu no matter how remote the place is. and also a few places on the expressways and Tirupathi.