[revharder]

Originally Posted by varunroy

Congrats for your new car.

A solid piece of advice. Always include the spare wheel in your Rotation programme. UNFORTUNATELY very few repairs know about it so make sure that you tell them. Follow the rotation diagram given in the Service Manual.

BTW, which car do you own ?

santro and palio1.6

santro tyres gives a life of about 40-42K kms.
palio also gives a life of near 40K kms.

i always replaces all 5 tyres at one go.

[burjiis]

Well, if you read the Maruti manual, it also mentions one more thing.
For the first 1000 kms, you must try and drive the car at varying speeds and not at one constant speed. So according to them highway driving would not be a good idea as your speed would be more or less constant. I would suggest not to use your airconditioning as well for the first 1000 kms.
Regarding the use of additives, most manufacturers are against their use. They are primarily used to clean the dirt accumulated so why use it in a new car? Are we assuming that the indian fuel is of bad quality?

Burjis

[WhiteKnight]

Originally Posted by karthik247

Why would u say that..70kmph refers only to the tyre speed and has nutin to do with the engine. Itz the RPM of the engine that u neeed to keep an eye on..

Well said. The key is not to strain the car. This applies to low RPM too. For example if you are driving at 40 kph in 5th gear, that is also damaging.
Enjoy your new car

[nitinhegde]

Ooops,

Lots of diverse opinions....just wondering if Vehicle Speed really matters much...afterall its the engine RPM which strains the vehicle....Higher the gear - Lower the rpm unless you rev it harder.I strictly do not rev it and change gears smoothly and at respective speeds.My mechanical engineering brain tells me that Vehicle speed is directly proportional to RPM given a constant gear ratio..

Do a simple test :Keep the Gear constant :
-Select fifth gear : RPM is showing around 1400 , Speed is 50 kmph(assumption)
-Now,start revving(press the accelerator) to increase the speed to 100 kmph
You can see that the RPM has doubled exactly to 2800....

For a new car - Lower RPM is the key....

I always maintain good gear ratios vs rpm...and usually never cross 2500 rpm..may be occasionally at lower gears on slopes where I can't help it...

My crusing speeds are around 70-80 and I occasionally touch 90 or at the most 100(then I step back to 80 again)...the rpm's are between 2000-2500 when I touch 80-90 kmph which is safe i feel...

Let me know your views please.....

[hrag]

nitinhegde - try and upshift in the 2000 - 2500 rpm band irrespective of the gear. You can stick to this range for the life of the car.

[Ram]

Originally Posted by revharder

rotate your car's tyres every 5000Kms or so, and do include that spare wheel too into this rotation!

Why rotate tires?
Assuming your new car is a front-wheel drive vehicle, the front tires sustain braking, steering and driving forces. Rear tires on the other hand only receive braking forces. So front tires tend to wear-out much faster.

Tire rotation ensures you get optimum and even tire life.
If you have radial tires, when you rotate your tires at the end of 5000 km,
make sure that tires used on the left hand side of the car are never used on the right. And vice-versa make sure that tires used on the right hand side of the car are never used on the left.

Why?
Because switching sides (right to left) will cause the tire to rotate in the opposite direction. Radial tires do not like this! Once a radial tire is turning in one direction you don't want to upset it. Imagine that they get cranky!

The steel-belt in the radial will "set" in the direction of rotation. If you reverse the direction by switching it to the opposite side, it would cause the steel belt to cut its way loose as it tries to set in the other direction.
Also, switching rotation direction will cause a radial tire to "scallop" and get "out of round".

Switching sides was fine when all our Ambassadors and Fiat-1100s and Heralds ran bias-ply (non-radial) tires.

So what happens to the spare?
The virgin spare tire becomes left-handed or right-handed depending on first use. After the first rotation, ensure you remember whether the spare is left handed or right handed.

[varunroy]

Hey Ram, this is news to me. My Sumo Victa GX TC Comes with 215/75 R15. My car has Bridgestones. Now if you look at the Rotation Diagram on Page 72 of the service manual, it reads something like this.

Spare tyre goes to Front RH
Front RH goes to Rear LH
Rear LH goes to Front LH
Front LH goes to Rear RH
Rear RH goes to Spare tyre.

The very fact that it is called Rotation means that all tyres go anywhere. Left or right, and even on the front,rear or spare. Many a times if the tyre wear is uneven it is also recommended to invert the side of the tyres on their discs. The inside of the tyre then faces out. Needless to say, wheel Balancing is a must.

So long....

[karthik247]

Originally Posted by WhiteKnight

Well said. The key is not to strain the car. This applies to low RPM too. For example if you are driving at 40 kph in 5th gear, that is also damaging.
Enjoy your new car

On that note...u'll have to be a fairly good driver to judge the right speed to shift gears n stuff. And if u were already a good driver, u would have probably known all this stuff by now.

Anyways, i'm already well past the 'new car' stage to it doesn't really make a difference to me or my car.

Cheers

[Ram]

Originally Posted by varunroy

My Sumo Victa GX TC Comes with 215/75 R15. My car has Bridgestones. Now if you look at the Rotation Diagram on Page 72 of the service manual, it reads something like this.

Spare tyre goes to Front RH
Front RH goes to Rear LH
Rear LH goes to Front LH
Front LH goes to Rear RH
Rear RH goes to Spare tyre.

No wonder Tata Sumos distinguish themselves among all Indian motor vehicles, in wearing out their tires, the fastest!

Seriously! early Sumos did come with bias-belted tires. The user manual may well contain legacy text from that past, which nobody at TELCO (now Tata Motors) has bothered to edit out.

Originally Posted by varunroy

The very fact that it is called Rotation means that all tyres go anywhere.

The word "Rotation" also comes from the hoary pre-radial past, when everybody drove on nylon and rayon bias-belted tires.

I have used nylon and rayon bias-belted tires, since 1975.
In fact my 1995 Premier Padmini today has lovely wide whitewall MRF bias-belted tires.

My first radial came in 1985 on my Ford Maverick. And it was a tubeless radial too!
Then my Ford Taunus had Vredestein Sprint radials. And my Mustang had high-tech Michelin TRX metric radials.
The Tire folks from Campbell-California, Everett-Washington and Rotterdam-the Netherlands, that I encountered, concurred in the advice that radials become direction-preferential after first use. They advised me not to change the direction of rotation.

My take is that there are two kinds of people.
Type A who claim that radials last very long lives (50,000+ km) and
Type B who claim that radials don't last long, to let their manufacturers enjoy abbreviated replenishment sale cycles.

Type A, rotate their left radials on the left; right radials on the right.
(I've even seen Aussie four-wheelers to have two spares, one for the right and one for the left.)

Type B rotate their radials according to their old bias-belted habits. They are the people who end up cribbing that their radials have delaminated on the highway and left them stranded and disappointed.

Warm Regards
Ram

[varunroy]

Sorry ram, I won't buy that argument.

Those tyre wear in the sumos would happen in the 1995's. All my tyres have performed very well. My Earlier sumo had the second set of tyres. The Original set gave me 70,000 Kms and the next set had run 65,000+ Km when I sold the car. All you need to do is Rotate, align and balance them.

I am sure without the consent of the tyre manufacturers, Tatas would not have put the Rotation diagram in black & white. I am also trying to talk to the Technical persons of tyre makers about this unidirectional run.

So long....

[sachinchavan]

Ram, if you move left tyre to right side but do not move it inside out, why would the rotation direction change?

[varunroy]

Spare tyre goes to Front RH
Front RH goes to Rear LH
Rear LH goes to Front LH
Front LH goes to Rear RH
Rear RH goes to Spare tyre.

The above mentioned pattern is specifically for Radials. For the non-radials the layout is different. If someone owns a standard Sumo of 1998 or earlier models, they are requested to refer to the Service Manual and post the diagram on this thread.

I personally feel that when a manufacturers specifies certain rituals to be followed, they would have spent thousands on the R & D and would have concluded what is the best solution for optimum performance.

If for some reason, that we can't comprehend at this moment, why would the manufacturers insist on doing something that could be harmful to their products. Further if what you claim was true some smart guy would have sued them and made millions.

Common guys, lets hear from other car users what their manufacturers have to say about this topic.

So long....

[prakash2757]

Nitin Said, he touches speed of 100 for a new car, Do u guys say yes for that ?

As of now what I know is new cars should not cross speed of 60 till it crosses 1000 Kms, What do u guys say abt it ?

[netarchie]

i too have a new car 3 weeks old, and have touched 130 in it. its not abt the speed but abt the higher RPM, you need to keep the RPM low not the speed and also need to vary speed and not run in a constant speed.
So for the first 1000 kms atleast city driving is preferable than highway driving.

[sachinchavan]

Originally Posted by netarchie

i too have a new car 3 weeks old, and have touched 130 in it. its not abt the speed but abt the higher RPM, you need to keep the RPM low not the speed and also need to vary speed and not run in a constant speed.
So for the first 1000 kms atleast city driving is preferable than highway driving.

You are assuming its only the engine that needs to be taken care of during the initial kms. What about the other moving and non-moving parts which get impacted by high speed?