[Jaggu]

hey so you are also venturing out into the highway eh.. have a great trip

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by GeekSrik

the weather in chennai is rainy in the evenings, and sort of hot in the mornings. mixed bag. and yes kuttappan, me and my wifey have a major aversion towards too much of AC, add the pollen in bangalore to that and what you have is an itchy nose and throat making me sneeze hundreds of times! any perfume in the car will just trigger off the sequence of sneezing over and over again! so what i do is if its getting hot inside, switch on the ac for a few mins and when the temp cools down, switch it off.

somehow i feel humid cities are better off, i ve stayed in kuala lumpur for a year 36 deg with 90% humidity, and chennai often 40+ degrees with 100% humidity and I find its relatively hard to get ill with common colds and the likes. in banglaore the pollen is enough for all suffering. my entire family is down with allergic cough (dry cough) and bouts of fever, tiredness, weakness etc. its a horror to get over all this again and again. blame the pollen!

Why not re-circulate the air inside? Rather than using the outside air for ac?

[sathya_nars]

Geek,
Is NVH high in Swift D (read few posts in this thread)? I am yet to plan for chennai trip.

[sathya_nars]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Why not re-circulate the air inside? Rather than using the outside air for ac?

That's right, I never put it in outside air mode, always it is in re-circ. hence many times it is semi-auto control for me becaz if it chooses outside air, i manually select re-circ.

[austere_sly]

For the first minute or so, I put it to outside mode, so that fresh air ( u get that at very rare places ) can replace the old air in the car. After that I put in Re - circ mode for effective cooling.
Ever noticed that fan speed increases in Re- Circ mode ?

[blorebuddy]

Originally Posted by GeekSrik

somehow i feel humid cities are better off, i ve stayed in kuala lumpur for a year 36 deg with 90% humidity, and chennai often 40+ degrees with 100% humidity and I find its relatively hard to get ill with common colds and the likes. in banglaore the pollen is enough for all suffering. my entire family is down with allergic cough (dry cough) and bouts of fever, tiredness, weakness etc. its a horror to get over all this again and again. blame the pollen!

OT: GeekSrik, may be you consult a good homeopathy Dr. as I was having the same allergic to cold air and I had the same problem of sneezing, running nose etc. It was horrible. Now days I am better thanks to Homeopathy.

[ravibhat]

About AC use AC with recirculating inside itself thats good for dusty Indian roads. Only in highways we should make AC on with outside air for 1 or 2 minutes and again change the mode to recirculation, thats also when there is nice road with very less traffic

Otherwise we end up dusty AC units and lot of dust will accumulate within car very fast.

About cold problems I suggest samething Homeopathy doctor is best bet to get rid of minor health issues. I am using homeopathy medicins from many years and found many advantages.

1. I suggest Homeopathy for these health issues like Cold/soaring throat infection, cough, stomach upset, headache, body pain, nerve pain.

2. For one visit it cost me 50 rs. including medicines/doctor fees. Doctor I consult has more than 20 years experience and very very good one.

3. We should take Homeopathy medicine with confidence and faith. Because I saw many poeple think Homeopathy takes long time to cure. But in my family I have noticed it takes 50% time to cure If we had consulted English medicine doctors.

4. My kid is also on Homeopathy when she suffers from cold. She love eating small sweet tablets.

Homeopathy is really good one for sure! Its like Fiat cars (not famous but cheap and focused for car lover) LOL

Regards,

Ravi.

[GeekSrik]

I'm just taking some time to first breathe properly, settle down in my couch and write about this trip! <--START--> Sturdy, Planted on the road, Awesome, great, terrific, smooth, silent, astounding, cool, marvellous <--END--> wondering what these are? well I had to use my choicest of words to describe my little beauty, both the car and the gem of a 1.3 MJD engine from FIAT. Having poured in my best words, let me now continue onto the facts!

It was a weekend that I was waiting for, for a long long time (read a few years) - thanks to my idiotic schedules I never took it up to go out somewhere decently. Friday I was in no mood to control myself anymore, and off I packed off my bags to go to chennai in my swift. Picked up my parents, and my aunty/uncle and set off at 4:30pm, trying to be early to beat the rush hour traffic. By about 5:30 i crossed Electronics City, and left the maddening IT and BT crowds behind. Reached hosur at 6:30pm and had some food at the reliance A1 outlet in hosur (neatly maintained and frequented by IT nerds!) and after that spent the rest of the night driving on the toll road to chennai.

The weather was bad, and there was water all over the highway in plenty. I drove between 80-100kmph most times, since it was night time. After a while, when I reached close to chennai, i found my headlights going real dim, the way they are NOT supposed to be. I was a bit concerned, but did not bother to inspect the same. Upto chennai is a good thing for the trip. but not into chennai. I ve been a regular visitor to chennai every year for the past twenty odd years, but day by day my impressions on the city is going down the drain. I am a tamilian, but lived in karnataka for many many years now, but still dont find an attachment to chennai city. The weather isnt exactly fabulous, but still personally i feel hot weather is a good thing. however the lanes are as small as ever, the traffic two fold now, no proper cop management, and absolutely no signboards at proper places. add to that a few flyover constructions and the roads were all dug up and with the recent spate of rains it was impossible to negotiate the city with my swift (with screwed up headlamps!). thankfully i went dead slow, and was able to find my way here and there.

The next morning i observed my car and it looked like it just came out of a riverbed! there was so much of slush on my headlamps that had completely blocked the view of the road. damn these curvy huge headlamp designs! I spent close to 2 hours to wash the car and bring it back to some shape so that it looked good atleast. one problem i had with the car is that with the a/c on and a bit of rains, my side window glass had lots of dirty droplets of water mixed with fog and i could not see a thing on the side. no matter how much of ac i used, this never went away. i m really angry with this problem and want the most technical stalwarts of this forum to suggest how i can either evaporate or trickle off excess water off these windows without leaving any stains. the side was so much invisible that i almost crashed straight onto a divider on the highway and missed by a few seconds. the night drive had all the hooligans shining their 1000 watt headlamps on my face without any respect!

end of bad part. now the good, better and best of my car. the car lives upto its name - SWIFT. it is really agile, and has a tireless engine. most of my drive was with 5 huge adults, a/c on level 2 (level 1 was not enough for chennai sultryness), and loads of small bags in the boot, and off and on music. with this kind of load, the engine never sounded tired EVER. no matter how much i pushed it, it seemed like it was asking for more! on the way back, i decided to leave while daylight was in abundance and i left at midday. 12:30 to be precise. with 30 mins of stop at all toll booths put together, i covered the entire journey in 5 1/2 hours. for a total of 350kms one way. being a sunday afternoon, there was NO traffic and it was an invitation for me to excercise the nitrous oxide in my car. stepped on the gas and oh boy oh boy! what a drive it was. only in the village intersection areas where there were crowds was my speed between 60-80. otherwise my slow driving was at 100kph, while my spirited driving was done at 120kmph steadily. whenever I felt like i wanted a boost to pep me up on lone stretches of clear highway I could do 140kph atleast more than twice. since the wind speed was extremely high and violent, I decided to stick to 120 and at times 100kph. 140 was to test the car. I believe the car can easily do 160kph on proper expressways. this car has plenty of juice to satisfy your palettes!

my uncle who was in the army earlier, worked as a project consultant for the toll highway project and he was explaining the designs etc, i must say i am impressed with the NHAI's work on this highway. with regular toll collection booths, they are able to upkeep the highway to top standards. except a few village maniacs manage to break some railings and ruin public and govt property just because they want to cross. and a few other nerds who think they are great achievers, could come straight at you with their car on your side of the road at 60-80kph. be warned, if ever such a thing happens, only your concentration can save you all.

the ac was at level 2 always and it did what it was supposed to with style. kept everyone inside real happy and the entire car was cool. the engine too never showed any signs of overheating etc. the heat meter was always where it was. the clutch seems to have loosened up a bit, but the gear shift still sucks. the tyres were just great, thanks jaggu for your wonderful advice, the michelins just did their job. even at 100/120/140, no one felt a thing and everyone were real comfy in the car.perhaps the space aspect is a tad bit annoying, but as such people were happy. cubbyholes are missing too, so had to juggle around with placing things here and there. if there are only hubby and wifey and perpaps a small kid, this car beats all! nothing like this! cornering and darting is done with utmost ease thanks the superb tyres! the best turn i took was on a flyover at 100kph, and the car didnt budge or sway beyond its line and length. awesome!! the power steering was wonderful thanks to eps and it was like playing a super fast video game!

now the other part - FE. i measured tankful to tankful, consumed about 22 litres to 370-380 km. i got about 17.5kmpl on the highways with ac always on at level 2, 5 adults and loads of luggage loaded in, 195 tyres, and at speeds always averaging 110kph. (80-100-120-140). surely its not the 23 people claim that this car would give, but (a) my measurements could be a bit wrong (b) the conditions exercised were severe on the car part. am i happy with this car, oh yes i am. except a few things going awry

1. the idiotic side visibility when it rains - friends can there be some heating strips customized and added on to the windows or back windshiled?
2. the parking visibility - in chennai apartment, i spent 15 mins parking this car. damn difficult i would say. luckily not a single scrape even. but a few times i just managed to touch the wall tip!

so much for the blah blah, here are the photos ! enjoy maadi.
until next time - bye!
(1500km completion report.)

[ravibhat]

Thats good Report, a day back we travelled in this highway I am impressed with the NHAI, very nice highway.

I do agree Swift P and D can achieve top speed of 160 easily.
My driver achieved 130km as top speed in my Swift P. I noticed my Innova never crossed
120kmph. Actually thats how SUV/MUV should be driven. We can achieve 140+ speeds with Swift and other sedans. Swift is really JEM car on highway. Its comfy highway car for 4 people on board.

Regards,

Ravi.

[king_julian]

Ravibhat: Sorry for going OT, but do you feel that the recirculation mode is effective for defogging the windshield during monsoon times? I always follow the recommendation to use the outside air mode when I feel that the windshield might fog up.

Thanks,
Amit.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Nice report!

The mileage is real good, and since you had so much of fun.

As for the side windows problems, am sure one of the Swift owners will be able to help you out.

@king julian: IMO, recirculation mode is effective. I have been using that method for long time now.

[ravibhat]

I am not sure about defogging with recirculation mode but what I read somewhere is when we switch on AC with defogging its mentioned we should use outside air.

When it rains I feel its advisable to use recirculation because If we use outside air water drops entering inside if not at least we won't get dry air which might damage the AC or related parts. I had aksed this in MUL service centre when own Swift, but they didn't know much about it. They explained me a bit and told me more info I can get from mannual.

Bottomline for dusty/rainy conditon using outside air might be risky, for dust free road condition its better to use outside circulation. This is how we should adjust in Indian condtion.

Regards,

Ravi.

[Jaggu]

@geek the fogging issue of the door window, you can either point the side blower away from the glass or close it completely to avoid the outside fogging and always wipe the door glass and ORVM when you stop, thats the only way out.

[vkochar]

Hey geek !! Excellent write up, Looks like you are in love with your Swift VDi. You should be, its a very good car. I have driven it a few times. The only problem is poor visibility and yes I can imagine with rain & dirt on the windows it is really risky to drive at nights.

Cheers !!

[GeekSrik]

wiping door glass when stopping seems too far fetched a solution, though its acceptible. can i do some enhancement to the windows such that the water trickles away instead of remaining there? i know one such thing its those water shields which are put up towards the top of the windows, the black ones, but they make the car look real ugly.