| My 30K 1.6L DOHC Accent with ABS has touched 50K
My Accent's odo ringed in 50,000 while I was driving in front of the GCDA complex in Ernakulam town recently.
And, I thought it's a good time for me to summarize my experience with this car which I picked up in Dec 2005.
History
After having a Maruti Omni for almost 5 years without any trouble and having lot of good driving experience, I thought it is time to move on and pick up something with few extra features.
Primarily what I was missing in an Omni 5-seater was the AC. Driving through city in summer was a torture without an AC. Moreover, many of my long drives to Kerala and many other places where day-time driving trips and having no AC was little too much to handle, of late. Apart from the lack of an AC, the Omni was a perfect vehicle in terms of driving comfort, seating, space, especially for a six-footer like me. It gives commanding view of the road and very comfortable entry exit into the car and comfortable seating for long drives. Of course, safety on highways is an issue with Omni. Though I've driven on highways on many long trips, we never got into any unpleasant experience with the Omni.
Having said that much about Omni, we started looking for an upgrade around mid-2005. Our interest was for a second hand Honda City/Lancer/Esteem/Baleno.
We kept on looking almost 6 months and never came across a good Honda City or Lancer. Baleno was just launched and was running pretty high at that time and few Esteems we've seen was not very impressive for the price they were tagged with.
So one day in December of 2005, we happened to spot a silver Accent in an Automartindia showroom. It had run 30K (30,250 to be exact), was of the 1.6L variant with ABS. It appeared to be a neat one and impressed us at the first look. Believe me; Accent was never in our list of options we were looking so far. I took a test drive and my interest in that increased. Finally, after a prolonged negotiation and getting some details of the previous owner and contacting him over phone (primarily for the verification of the owner and to know the existence of somebody like that :-) ) we struck the deal and took delivery of the car in mid-Dec 2005.
My experience with Automartindia was pleasant initially, but later turned sour with few issues like their PDI and service commitments which they could not meet very well. Also, few things they did not explain me well and inform me. I'll touch up on them as we go along. But, they were very prompt in terms of getting the documentation completed (basically transferred from Mysore).
On the other side, I sold my Omni through Maruti True value in June of 2006 for a decent deal. They promptly handed over me the cheque on the same day and send me a copy of the RC book with the new owner's details in couple of weeks. Very prompt and clean/hassle-free transaction.
The Accent Experience
It took sometime for me to get used to the big car feel/issue with Accent. Moving from an Omni where I almost sat on the road, to driving a car with long bonnet was little uncomfortable for me, initially. But, I got used to that much easier and the car appeared to be going pretty well. I did not get any of the free services done from Automartindia. Somehow, I felt more comfortable with Hyundai service centers. I got most of my services done at the Trident service center at Kalyan Nagar. I changed to Trident Indiranagar for the last one since I was not feeling very good about the Kalyan Nagar work especially with an Upholstery wash they did very unprofessionally. My experience with Trident Indiranagar has been pretty good (apart from the last service, I got most of my accessories fitted from Indiranagar service center).
The Puncture Saga
One interesting thing I've experienced with this car was a series of punctures, almost all at the wrong times. The first one happened in Coimbatore at 2AM, while we were just revving out of the last toll stop on the L&T bye-pass, for our best luck. The front tire went flat. The second one happened on Cubbon road, few minutes after we embarked a home trip to Kerala. Few others followed at awkward times. Many folks who fixed the punctures gave me various reasons for the frequent punctures and I found the one given by the guy from Sai Tire Shop in Indiranagar more convincing.
The tire configuration on this car was interesting when I picked it up. It had two factory-fitted (presumed to be) Bridgestone 175/70R13 on the front and two Observe 185/70R13 stud less tires on the rear. The front ones appeared to be decent and wearing out evenly. But, the rear ones are wearing out unevenly and the Sai Shop guys told me that these Observe tires are used winter tires imported from other countries cheap and sold in grey market in India. And, they are not good for our roads and are prone to all kinds of damage. Incidentally, except the one on L&T bye-pass all other punctures have been on the rear tires.
The explanation I got from Automartindia folks and the previous owner when I talked to personally was that he changed the tires when the stock ones had run 15K. He got the news ones from a friend in Bombay and changed them during one of his trips. And, being a novice on this stuff I believed them for their words. I'm still peeved at the Automartindia guys for not telling me about these tires, which I'm sure they would've known. Anyway, now I kind of know why they are getting punctured often.
So, I'm planning to change all of them and upgrade to tubeless tires before my next long drive home.
The Abrupt Engine Halt and Starting Trouble
This is an interesting problem I've faced with this car few times. First I saw this in Kerala while climbing a slope. The car stopped all of a sudden, probably due to slow speed at higher-gear drive at that point of time. And, it would not start. I cranked and cranked with no luck. The battery was very healthy and it had run 700 kms after the last service. Then, few of the local muscle men helped us by pushing the car up the slop and I could start the car with their help. I took the car straight to Popular Hyundai in Cochin and they couldn't figure out any issue with the car. And, interestingly I could not reproduce the problem for them or for myself later. Second occurrence of this issue was while we were on a trip to Kerala and the car stopped in the heart of Perintalmanna town in peak traffic at a gradient. We had tough time getting help from city folks to push the car. After, this I tried stopping the car after a continuous drive of few hours. The car would not start for 10-15 minutes. Then, it would start as normal. Basically, something is getting heated up and the car starts after that 'something' cools down. I showed this to the Kalyan Nagar Hyundai folks and they too were clue-less on this issue.
Then, during the last service which I did at the Indiranagar Hyundai service center I mentioned this to the service consultant and he suggested we do engine rejuvenation. We did that work and have not seen this problem during my last Kerala trip. I've stopped the car few times after driving couple of hours and I could start the car immediately without any issues, which would've been impossible otherwise. So, I believe the engine rejuvenation has taken care of the 'issue', which still I'm not sure what exactly it was.
Other Notable Incidents
The car would not start one fine morning. Having the scare of the not-starting-after-a-long-drive I started fearing that the starting trouble had become an issue even during cold starts. Then, I talked to the Hyundai guy and he suggested getting the batteries checked. I got in touch with the Excide folks and they figured out that the battery had died. So, the battery got replaced and all started normally and I was relieved.
The wind shield vipers have gone bad once and got replaced, which appears to be having gone bad again. I got an under-chassis anti-rust coating done during the last service.
Nothing else noticeable, apart from these.
The Mileage Factor
I've checked the mileage once and found it to be giving around 11 kmpl in the city with normal petrol from HP stations. Then, I changed to Shell and found it be giving 12 kmpl in the city. During my trip to Kodai, I filled HP Power and found the car responding much better than earlier with Power and the drive was unusually smooth especially the drive up Kodai and the return drive. So, I fill it with HP Power now and have not yet checked the FE.
Maintenance Costs
Generally, I found the maintenance costs are high for this car compared to Maruti (you can ask, can you compare service costs of a Hyundai car with that of a Maruti vehicle, but then Hyundai claims to have the cheapest spares in the market). And, the quality of their spares is not that good. Also, service charges are much higher that cars of this class in Maruti. But, spares are supposed to be cheap. In running from 30K to 50K the main costs I'd spent were for the engine rejuvenation, battery replacement, viper replacement, few bulbs replacement, and routine maintenance charges, and of course few puncture fixes and tube changes.
Overall Experience
I found this car to be pleasure to drive. The 102.3 bhp engine gives it a lot of power under it's hood to glide through the highways and makes overtaking an easy task. It can pick up pretty fast and zoom past many cars of its class. The seating is comfortable for 5 people and the AC is good. Power windows work with out any trouble. I've put the ABS to use few times and that has helped us to be safe in difficult situations.
Looking ahead
I was looking for an OHC for some time to move to and sell off this car. And, I almost sold this car in last Dec'07/Jan'08 time and almost purchased an OHC Vtec. But, then I could not push the deals due to few bad incidents in my family and was not in the mood for them.
Though my dream of possessing a Vtec is still alive, I'm very happy with the car and going to keep it for some more time.
Having put the starting trouble issue behind me, and planning to change the tires to tubeless type, and I expect the car to give us years of trouble free and safe ride. | 
17th February 2008, 13:50
One thing caught my eye - HP Power and the unusual smoothness you feel right after that!!! True, very true! I tried BP Speed, BP normal and switched to HP Power as it gave my car the extra punch while driving and made overtaking easier. I used to get 9.5 to 10 kmpl with HP power and when I experimented with HP normal last month I was amazed to get 11.8 kmpl mileage. I live in Chennai with relatively good roads, but get stuck up at the notorious Cathipara junction everyday for about 30 mins and still managed to get this figure 
