[DHABHAR.BEHRAM]

Originally Posted by XD2

Hi Amolpol, I had the same issue with my headlights. Even after a visit to the ASC, its still there. So, am done trying to follow up with them to get it fixed. Am looking at doing it myself now. Found this white colored knob somewhere on top of the headlight assembly, which I hope will do the trick.

Dear Amolpol & XD2 - for headlights, as you only want to do the adjustment, it is very easy, as per CMVR, the manufacturer has to compulsorily provide manual dip adjustment in every car. First, see if that knob is set to "0" position (headlights in highest position). If yes and still adjustment between RH and LH lights is not equivalent and not centralized, there are three screw driver slots provided at the back of the reflector mounting screws. Turn them clockwise or anticlockwise to adjust the beam pattern, two for horizontal and one for vertical. You don't even have to remove the black powder coated headlight ring to do this, additional facility of slots is provided at the back of the threaded end of the three screws. You just have to open the bonnet, that's all. ASC should know and do this!

Dear Amolpol - thanks for clarifying on the seats. Any "elaborate" looking seat does not fit into the Jeep's character but that's my personal opinion! . Think carefully, you may actually agree with me. I hope the SA rollover bar comes your way soon. It's actually a non-issue but with monkeys (and bean counters) all over the place, you are seeing what is happening!

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

[manveet]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

Dear Amolpol - I have mentioned umpteen number of times that front seats as supplied are of Bolero, fitted in the same location as Bolero with steering wheel also in the same location as Bolero but still you people are hell bent on changing front seats so please go ahead and do so, I won't come in your way. But please do me a favor. Please use the production seats for some serious distance, then change the seats, then use "your" seats and then let me know your honest to goodness comments from lumbar support, thigh support, hands on steering wheel position and appearance / rattling point of view. I will want to see your real comments.

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

There is nothing great in procuring the SA rollover bar. I guess it has fallen prey to the **** **** / murphy's law, which happens! You know what I mean. There is business waiting at somebody's doorstep and somebody does not want to take it! Sad! .

Behram Dhabhar

Originally Posted by amolpol

DB Sir, I guess you got me wrong, I was referring to the rear seats that are up for a change. No plans to change the front seats as of now. The jump seats are the third row seats in the Innova which can be double folded sideways to make the boot space usable.

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

Dear Amolpol[/u] - thanks for clarifying on the seats. Any "elaborate" looking seat does not fit into the Jeep's character but that's my personal opinion! . Think carefully, you may actually agree with me. I hope the SA rollover bar comes your way soon. It's actually a non-issue but with monkeys (and bean counters) all over the place, you are seeing what is happening!

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

Dear Amolpol, congrats on your Thar. Plus your photography is awesome. Loved your Thar pictures.

Dear DB sir, I respect your inputs on all Thar related threads, they have been instrumental in helping me make an informed decision before going ahead with the purchase. Thank you very much for that.

However, I am in slight disagreement on the front seats. In my personal opinion they were of very poor quality. I will share my detailed feedback with you on a separate thread - just wanted to put in my 2 cents here for the benefit of Amolpol.

I have replaced both front and rear seats with Innova seats. Front Innova seats are much better than stock Bolero seats in my opinion. The rear facing Innova seats are good but they have their own set of drawbacks. Also, fitting will be slightly different from that depicted in the TBhp thread I referred to - I have done it they way it was shown but that needed further mods which made me spend more time on it. And the output is still not perfect as another set of problems have cropped up which means more time investment. I have learnt from experience so please connect with me offline before changing your seats - esp. if I am not able to start my thread in a day or so.

My Thar has done about 1800 kms and I have done quite a few mods already. I haven't got time to take a good set of pictures as yet which is causing me to delay starting my thread but guess it's about time I do it - especially if it helps fellow Thar owners in any way possible. The good pictures can come later.

Cheers!
Manveet

[manveet]

Here's a picture to give you a general idea ..

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by manveet

Dear Amolpol, congrats on your Thar. Plus your photography is awesome. Loved your Thar pictures.

Thanks Manveet, I'm glad you liked the pictures.

Originally Posted by manveet

I have replaced both front and rear seats with Innova seats. Front Innova seats are much better than stock Bolero seats in my opinion. The rear facing Innova seats are good but they have their own set of drawbacks. Also, fitting will be slightly different from that depicted in the TBhp thread I referred to - I have done it they way it was shown but that needed further mods which made me spend more time on it. And the output is still not perfect as another set of problems have cropped up which means more time investment. I have learnt from experience so please connect with me offline before changing your seats - esp. if I am not able to start my thread in a day or so.

For the front seats, did they fit directly or you had to change the rails, do additional fabrication etc? I don't want to give up on the stock seats right now unless I find issues with them. That would mostly be after one of my long drives somewhere which is not going to be very frequent anyways.

I see that you have fitted the Innova rear seats in a very nicely finished manner. I do have a few questions before I start pestering you offline:

- I believe that the headroom is a challenge because the seat mounts on top of the rear wheel well, but would it be bad even for a 5ft person? I really don't think its a problem if anybody taller than that complains of headroom behind.
- I have a couple of ideas on fabricating a bracket for mounting the seats, but I'm still contemplating if I should get a stand for the center or create a platform to use it with the original lock mechanism at the bottom. How have you approached it?
- The carpeting you have done, is that across the floor or just on the wheel well?
- How much rear space are you left with for luggage when you put the seats down? Again, the leg room I need is for an average person and tall folks would anyways have a potential hazard on the rear seat.

You should get your review and ownership thread up soon, it'll be good to get an idea of the mods you've carried out. Once the seats are done, I don't think i'm going to do much except the SA rollcage for which I am going to pray to God from today onwards.

[manveet]

Originally Posted by amolpol

Thanks Manveet, I'm glad you liked the pictures.

For the front seats, did they fit directly or you had to change the rails, do additional fabrication etc? I don't want to give up on the stock seats right now unless I find issues with them. That would mostly be after one of my long drives somewhere which is not going to be very frequent anyways.

I see that you have fitted the Innova rear seats in a very nicely finished manner. I do have a few questions before I start pestering you offline:

- I believe that the headroom is a challenge because the seat mounts on top of the rear wheel well, but would it be bad even for a 5ft person? I really don't think its a problem if anybody taller than that complains of headroom behind.
- I have a couple of ideas on fabricating a bracket for mounting the seats, but I'm still contemplating if I should get a stand for the center or create a platform to use it with the original lock mechanism at the bottom. How have you approached it?
- The carpeting you have done, is that across the floor or just on the wheel well?
- How much rear space are you left with for luggage when you put the seats down? Again, the leg room I need is for an average person and tall folks would anyways have a potential hazard on the rear seat.

You should get your review and ownership thread up soon, it'll be good to get an idea of the mods you've carried out. Once the seats are done, I don't think i'm going to do much except the SA rollcage for which I am going to pray to God from today onwards.

Your questions are bang on, which means you have done your homework well . But the answers are slightly more complex. Please give me a day or so and I will give a detailed review on my thread. My only intention of posting right now was to request you to hold on. Since I have been there done that, did not want a fellow BHP'ian to burn fingers.

I have the SA roll cage installed. Dealers in NCR have it in stock or can order it on short notice. At 12,500/- it is quite expensive, but very effective in reducing vibrations once you connect it to the Targa band. Mine is pretty much for aesthetic appeal now as I am going in for a Bimbra FRP hard top next week.

[Trueintrepid]

Originally Posted by manveet

Here's a picture to give you a general idea ..

Originally Posted by manveet

I have the SA roll cage installed. Dealers in NCR have it in stock or can order it on short notice. At 12,500/- it is quite expensive, but very effective in reducing vibrations once you connect it to the Targa band. Mine is pretty much for aesthetic appeal now as I am going in for a Bimbra FRP hard top next week.

Just an observation, Manveet. It doesn't look like the roll-over cage is SA from the picture. SA comes powder coated without the rexine wrapped around the bar rails.

[amolpol]

Wishing everyone a very happy 2013!

Been quite sometime since there's been any update on the jeep, mainly coz December was over in a jiffy with making sure everything at work is taken care of before our vacation to Gujarat. The Safari once again did its service on our 4000km round trip to the land of Kutch and Jamnagar while the jeep lazily enjoyed company of other cars in the parking lot. But it's not going to remain this way forever, some day the jeep will be called for action...but that won't be until everything is done on it.

Some latest updates on my jeep:

- Remember the tyre touching issue I had talked about, I noticed that tyre was indeed touching in the front on a bar that goes under the body into the wheel well (sorry, haven't paid attention to what that bar was for). It was only happening on full turns and the lack of clearance was around 1cm I think. So the thought was that if the wheels were spaced out by about an inch, then the issue should go away totally, but I was a bit apprehensive about shifting to allioys. After doing a bit of research and some advise from fellow bhpians, I finally moved to a set of alloys and am happy to report that the issue is now taken care of. In fact, the turning behavior is much more refined than with the stock wheels and the jeeps stance is now enhanced with the wider look. Overall, I think it was a wise decision to do it. Also, I got the alignment checked this time while the wheels were changed so thats a good thing too.

- The Hella lamps are fitted with regular bolts and I'm still a bit scared to leave the jeep at unattended parking spots. Will get the security nuts shortly to buy me some peace of mind. The lights have survived a near miss when the jeep was parked for the last half of December while I was away. One of the lamps had become loose and was ready to fall off, luckily there are no bad souls in my parking lot (may be coz there's CCTV surveillance) who could have just walked away with it. The other cheaper option is to get the bolt spot welded so that it cant be taken out easily, but I'm thinking it would damage it permanently in case I need to take the lights out someday. Any other suggestions would be welcome.

- The Innova rear seats have been procured and are still occupying prime real estate in my house. My wife's now ready to throw them out if I dont get them fixed soon. I'm still deciding on the best way to put them and finding a good fabricator who can help me with it. More on this later...but let me know if you know of someone who can help with the fabrication.

- The Gods have finally answered my prayers and I felt blessed when I received the call from Mr Chandrashekhar that the monkeys at Mahindra spares department have sent the "correct" replacement for the "wrong" part in the rollcage assembly after two long months. I will be leaving the jeep at the India Garage Peenya workshop for a couple of days to get the fitment done. That is one big relief since the rollcage was on the regulatory requirement list for the Bangalore OTR.

I'm hoping that I will be able to finish all the issues by the end of Jan, but lets see how that goes!

For now, here's a picture of the jeep after the alloy fitment:

[amolpol]

I do have a question for people who have experience with winches. I'm thinking of getting a Warn 10000lbs winch from the US next month but the weight is around 87lbs ie 40kg. Now even though the allowance is two pieces of baggage of 50lbs each, the max they'll stretch is around 30kgs in a single package.

Will it be easy to split the package in 2 parts and the re-assemble it once I'm back? I'm thinking the drum and motor should be a logical split but not sure how viable it is to do it that way.

Also would there be issues with customs, the price is around 32k and I won't have anything else to declare. Given the 25k limit I'm okay to pay the duty on the rest of the amount.

[starter]

Originally Posted by amolpol

Also would there be issues with customs, the price is around 32k and I won't have anything else to declare. Given the 25k limit I'm okay to pay the duty on the rest of the amount.

Hey Amol,
I tried doing this last year when i was in US for a family vacation.
You could try to put the winch rope and the fair lead seperately and the winch (motor + drum) seperately.
However, i had major issues with the way Lufthansa handled the baggage.
They asked me to pay up for 2 extra heavy and extra big baggage for whatever reason and it proved to be very expensive.
So, i left the winch with my brother to return it.
Another thing is that the price of 32K might be what it is worth in USD. AFAIK, the indian customs would look at its indian price which is more than 50K.
All the best.
Cheers,
Deepak

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by starter

Hey Amol,
I tried doing this last year when i was in US for a family vacation.
You could try to put the winch rope and the fair lead seperately and the winch (motor + drum) seperately.
However, i had major issues with the way Lufthansa handled the baggage.
They asked me to pay up for 2 extra heavy and extra big baggage for whatever reason and it proved to be very expensive.
So, i left the winch with my brother to return it.
Another thing is that the price of 32K might be what it is worth in USD. AFAIK, the indian customs would look at its indian price which is more than 50K.
All the best.
Cheers,
Deepak

Thanks Deepak, glad to know that this has been tried before.

Did you have any other luggage besides the winch? I'm going to get only the winch as my check-in luggage since its a very short visit and I will need only a cabin bag for my stuff. I was thinking to split the stuff in two strong duffel bags and have enough of packing stuffed around to protect it from hard hits. That way both bags should be under the weight and dimension limits prescribed for checkin baggage.

I was under the impression that the customs guys would consider the price based on the original invoice for the item. I believe its only if you dont have the appropriate bill when they would want to look up the local prices for any item. But again this is what I've heard and would like to confirm it. Even if I end up paying ~10k as duty, its still going to be a better deal than buying it here.

I'm still on the fence to order it, don't want to buy it and later realize I can't get it back.

[amolpol]

Is it true that you can't fix an issue with a jeep without giving birth to another one? So I was feeling happy that the tyre touching issue had gone away after installing the alloy wheels until the point when I started hearing a lot of buzzing in the cabin on my way to the Mahindra workshop yesterday morning. Apparently the tyres have now started humming away to glory on the tar roads and the noise is loud enough to cause irritation inside the cabin when the windows are rolled up. The music system is now being sorely missed and I intend to put 2 pairs of components to drown that humming noise as soon as the jeep is back with the rollcage installed and the seat fabrication work is done.

Now my thinking is that given the tyres are the same and its only the alloys that have changed, that it may be the root cause to the issue. But am trying to reason out why would it happen

- would it be that the 6.5J wheels were causing lesser contact area between the tyre and the ground which has now increased with the 8J rims
- or would it be the fact that the track width has increased with the alloys and the tyres are now jutting out of the fender flares by about 1.5-2 inches on each side whereas earlier they were well within the fender flare boundary.

I'm tending towards the second option since the contact patch theory isn't making too much of sense, but I could be wrong. I was aware that the Maxxis would be noisier and was prepared to deal with it, but I was pleasantly surprised when the tyres didn't really make any noise with the stock rims and now it seems to be showing its true character. Also, its not really about what I can do anything about it now, but it would be great to understand the cause and effect equation here for future reference.

PS> Oh and BTW, I'm still waiting to hear a success story about bringing a winch in check-in luggage. So if you have done it or know someone who's done it, let me know!

[manveet]

Originally Posted by amolpol

Is it true that you can't fix an issue with a jeep without giving birth to another one? So I was feeling happy that the tyre touching issue had gone away after installing the alloy wheels until the point when I started hearing a lot of buzzing in the cabin on my way to the Mahindra workshop yesterday morning. Apparently the tyres have now started humming away to glory on the tar roads and the noise is loud enough to cause irritation inside the cabin when the windows are rolled up. The music system is now being sorely missed and I intend to put 2 pairs of components to drown that humming noise as soon as the jeep is back with the rollcage installed and the seat fabrication work is done.

Now my thinking is that given the tyres are the same and its only the alloys that have changed, that it may be the root cause to the issue. But am trying to reason out why would it happen

- would it be that the 6.5J wheels were causing lesser contact area between the tyre and the ground which has now increased with the 8J rims
- or would it be the fact that the track width has increased with the alloys and the tyres are now jutting out of the fender flares by about 1.5-2 inches on each side whereas earlier they were well within the fender flare boundary.

I'm tending towards the second option since the contact patch theory isn't making too much of sense, but I could be wrong. I was aware that the Maxxis would be noisier and was prepared to deal with it, but I was pleasantly surprised when the tyres didn't really make any noise with the stock rims and now it seems to be showing its true character. Also, its not really about what I can do anything about it now, but it would be great to understand the cause and effect equation here for future reference.

Hi,

I am running Yoko Geo AT tires on 8J rims and they too protrude beyond the fender flare by an inch or so. I can assure you there is zero humming noise.

Pardon my limited exposure to tires, and I couldn't figure it out from your past posts, but are your Maxxis Bighorn MT by any chance? Just asking because humming sound (and also more than normal tire-wear) is a well documented issue in running MT's on tar.

Regards.

[amolpol]

Yup, I have the Maxxis Bighorn MTs on the Thar. My use for the jeep isnt really a daily driver, nor will it become the highway cruiser and the MTs were put keeping in mind the OTRs that I intend to use it for. I can't really afford to keep another set of tires because of space constraints and that meant I had to settle down with the MTs knowing the limitations and the advantages as well.

The humming sound isn't really my concern since I knew it was a potential side-effect of the MTs, what intrigues me is that it wasn't there until I switched to the alloys.

Originally Posted by manveet

Hi,

I am running Yoko Geo AT tires on 8J rims and they too protrude beyond the fender flare by an inch or so. I can assure you there is zero humming noise.

Pardon my limited exposure to tires, and I couldn't figure it out from your past posts, but are your Maxxis Bighorn MT by any chance? Just asking because humming sound (and also more than normal tire-wear) is a well documented issue in running MT's on tar.

Regards.

[manveet]

Originally Posted by amolpol

The humming sound isn't really my concern since I knew it was a potential side-effect of the MTs, what intrigues me is that it wasn't there until I switched to the alloys.

That's what intrigued me about your post as well and I felt silly giving you the explanation as you obviously are quite knowledgeable about these things (basis you thread).

Perhaps there was a humming sound before but you never noticed it, however now with alloys the contact area has increased thereby magnifying the sound. This seems to be the only plausible explanation.

[manasm]

Amal,

The humming sound is a combination of the MTs and the fact that the tyres stick out of the wheel well. I had the issue of a slight buzzing/humming with my offset alloys and the Geolandar ATs.

I covered the engine bay and floor of the Thar with thick industrial rubber mats which damps the sounds. Am waiting for Feb and then will be ordering Dampmat from Monty. Have heard only good things about the product. The Dampmat will replace the rubber mats and should cut out external road noises even more.

Regards,
Manas