[Thad E Ginathom]

It's a small car, and was never going to be good at load carrying, other than a couple of shopping bags.

[harshavardhan]

The better thing was to haul the bicycle in a three wheeler. It would have costed about Rs. 150/- or thereabouts and saved the Swift from a few scratches or better still to cycle back home...

-Harshavardhan

[zuch]

Originally Posted by GeekSrik

Today I wanted to go back to my basics of driving - the bicycle. Went to ulsoor to buy a hercules bicycle. Costed me 4.7k for a 6 geared one including 4% VAT.

But the real deal was to understand how to put it into my swift. I removed the stereo wood panel at the back, then I folded the rear seat only to understand from jaggu that only one fold is possible, its not a double fold

Then I had to push the left front seat fully in front and also the backrest of that seat fully in front. As though this was not enough I still had to push the driver seat in front as much as possible so that the driver (me) pukes everything from his tummy due to steering touching my big tummy (i ve just bought the cycle you see ). finally i managed to push the bike inside and perhaps this is really where a car with boot and double fold rear seats would help I thought.

See for yourself.

GeekSrik, I cycle a lot and sometimes we go for off road biking and quite often I have to carry my bicycle in a car. Even if you had a sedan like the accent (like I did till a while back) you would have faced the same problem.

The trick to keeping a bicycle in a car is that for any bicycle - new or old it is very easy to take out the front wheel and keep it separately. You just have to open two nuts and there is no chance of any damage to the bicycle. After that you can easily fit the cycle into a car and be able to close the boot. So next time if you have to carry a bike you can do that.

[GeekSrik]

Originally Posted by vid6639

OT: which cycle did you buy?

Did you try putting the cycle with the front wheel towards the boot and the boot a little open and tied rather than fully closed. That's how it used to fit in my 800.

Hercules, 6 gear, 4700 bucks. after having got used to cars for 9 years now, i find it kind of funny to sit on a bike i havent been using two wheelers even. and talk about the effort to go even half a kilometer.

whole body aching already

[phamilyman]

Fantastic. While in Ahmedabad, I used to cycle some 3.5km to work, and some socializing with friends would easily make it a 10km round trip daily.

Not that I lost much weight, but a flight of stairs up four floors suddenly seemed a very easy proposition!

[GTO]

Geeksrik,

Maybe you could try sourcing one of those roof racks specially made for bicycles?

[GeekSrik]

Guys

I finally finished 15000 kms with my swift in less than one year to be precise. And I can say with lots of pride that this is one engine that will leave drivers spellbound for many thousand kms to come!

I had one major accident in this one year (and also the first one in 10 years of using a car really!), barring which minor skirmishes were also there. Of late I also banged into the pavement due to misjudging the height when taking left, and my alloys bore the brunt along with my michelins. The alloys were scraped on one side, and the tyre was shaven off for a small portion. thankfully no harm anywhere. visibility and rattles continue to be one of the top problems with this car.

If at all there was really any other issues, they would be lack or rear space and driver seat not being extremely supportive to the back and thighs.

Service costs until now were in the range 400-600 bucks each time if at all anything needed to have been done (barring the accident bill which was marginally higher).

I strongly believe in this car that I can easily finish another 15000 kms in no time and look back to say "Well for the past 30000kms, this engine and care were superb to use!"

[Vid6639]

Were these the rear alloys with which you hit the kerb? A simple way to avoid this problem is to turn in as late as possible. This is one common thing which I see no one does. They turn in early and as a result the rear/mid of the car comes perilously close to the median sometimes they aren't so lucky.

[bharanidharang]

i can see the joy in your words on completing 15000 kms. i am sure its going to keep you the same way for years to come. have fun driving

[anandtheleo]

Congrats on completing 15000 kms wishing you many more happy miles.

[GeekSrik]

last time my insurance was about 15000 bucks. thanks to accident claim, this time the insurance came without no claim bonus, and costed me about 13000. i got the insurance done from maruti insurance within two minutes.

[GeekSrik]

ok, i ve finished about 15,500 kms now. and then a new problem. my autocop works quite well for unlock/lock, but the siren wont make any sounds! how interesting for a thief aint it?

i run the car this way for about a week or two, reason being laziness, the true trait of a geek. and then i call up konark, and get the autocop number, then call him up. one guy turns up at home (fresher, having no expertise) looks at a few wires operates stuff and then says siren has a problem and goes home.

today i get another guy to my office, he knows what hez doin. first he touches the wires when autocop is connected to battery, gets flying sparks on his hand, then realizes hez also a human being after all and switches things off properly before trying tricks. finds a broken wire, sets that right (joints of course!) and then miraculously the siren sounds properly now.

add to this i had mentioned a while ago that my dealer claimed that in swift diesel cars, the lock wont auto lock when ignition is turned on. i was bewildered with this statement as i believed autocop wasnt a fool to introduce products based on variants of cars!

the issue finally turns out to be that both autocop and the swift D have a delay before activating the lock, and when both work in tandem things are liable to screw up making the car not auto lock. so the guy turns his delay off, and leaves it to the car and the car wonderfully after its delay locks itself up decently. viola!

a simple thing that people dont know about or are lazy to figure out!

cost of the call : zero. guy doesnt even accept the fifty bucks I gave him out of courtesy on a hot day.

Well done autocop. I ll buy you again next time around!

[TOR]

Good info on the Autocop there! Can the 'delay', either in the car or the autocop be varied?

[rajneeesh]

GeekSrik,
Good that you got the Siren in your car fixed. I has a similar issue with my Indica last year and did not attend to it as the cental / remote locking was working fine. One morning I discovered that my car had been broken into ( the rear quarter glass had been removed). The car was not stolen, neither was the stereo touched, but the burglar had stolen the car battery. A stich in times saves nine.

I then called the Autocop folks, and the service technician came at the committed time and replaced the siren. Autocop does provide good service.

[GeekSrik]

TOR , i am not sure if the delay can be varied. i m sure there will be a way to adjust the hardware for this, but too much of programming with any hardware requires some sort of console where one can see whats going on, hence i think the options will be limited.