[gods-envy]

Originally Posted by SoulDrive

Hello Safari owners! I'm a Safari devotee looking for a chance to own this beast for sometime now. If any of you are looking for a new home for your Safari, please do let me know! I'm looking for a Storme (LX/EX/VX) from around 2013-2015. Have spoken to way too many dealers/owners and have not found one yet that I was convinced was cared for with mechanical empathy. I'm based out of Bangalore, but open to acquiring from out of state if the overall budget works out for both parties.

Hi SoulDrive,
My Safari Storme is for sale. Please check the classifieds.

[viXit]

My wiper armature linkages are rusting.
the part replacement costs 10k.

this is the driver size linkage. It's almost impossible to move. Passenger size joint seems fine. Is it possible to take this to a metal worker/mechanic and have them un-sieze it?

or should I just replace the damn thing?

Red encircled is the seized joint.

https://youtu.be/yr3KHSU3kXE

[comfortablynumb]

Originally Posted by viXit

or should I just replace the damn thing? Red encircled is the seized joint.

Have you tried spraying any rust remover like WD-40 on it? If no, would suggest trying that first before taking it to a mechanic for repair or replacement.

[condor]

Experienced an issue with the Starter today.

I normally switch off the engine when the wait time at a signal is long, and did so today a couple of times when on way to office. However on the 3rd instance, the Storme refused to start. I was in the right lane of a divided stretch, and traffic busy. Tried to start, but when it didnt, I let the Storme move forward on the sloping road, and managed to bring it to the left side before starting the problem solving process. Thanks a ton to all the other motorists who realized there is a problem, and let me move across from right side to the left.

Electricals looked ok - stereo, power windows both work. However on cranking, there is no sound that one would hear from the starter motor. Absolute silence.

Removed key and re-inserted, tried again. No luck (has worked once before in an instance long back)

Called Exide Batmobile who raised a paid service request. The person came after an hour, and we tried to jump-start by connecting the spare battery using the jump cables. This too didnt work.

The Amaron battery showed health status green, and the cells looked to have full level of water in it, despite the 2 years of use.

We managed a push start and then I went directly to TASS. My regular mechanic checked it further.

Relays were good. However, the culprit turned out to be a loose clip on the cable connecting the battery to the starter motor. At the starter motor end, there are two types of connectors on this cable: a clip or a regular nut to hold the cable down. The problem noticed in my Storme was because it has a clip type connector.

We tried starting a few times there, and it worked fine. Came home and checked it again after some time. Thinks look fine for now.

He also checked the battery for voltage levels, and it looks good. The starter motor did not have any powder/residue on the surface either.

So fingers crossed that the problem does not occur again.

*

Btw is it correct that the Storme cannot be jump-started - the battery in the vehicle must be good. In other words, if the battery goes dead, then we need to either charge that battery outside and put it back in, or place a good battery in the vehicle to make it start. Has anyone else faced this ?

[ph03n!x]

Originally Posted by condor

...
*

Btw is it correct that the Storme cannot be jump-started - the battery in the vehicle must be good. In other words, if the battery goes dead, then we need to either charge that battery outside and put it back in, or place a good battery in the vehicle to make it start. Has anyone else faced this ?

Speaking purely from an electrical circuit perspective - I don't see why jumpstarting the Storme would be a challenge if battery is the issue. As long as the donor battery has adequate capacity to take the load, electrons are saying they'll do the work

[condor]

Issue looks resolved - had to go out yesterday for a slightly important task and it worked fine.

Originally Posted by ph03n!x

Speaking purely from an electrical circuit perspective - I don't see why jumpstarting the Storme would be a challenge if battery is the issue. As long as the donor battery has adequate capacity to take the load, electrons are saying they'll do the work

Logically, yes. But would like to hear from some one who has done it. (That point was shared with me by some one who knows the vehicle very well, and I would be surprised if he was wrong on that.)

[condor]

Originally Posted by viXit

My wiper armature linkages are rusting.
the part replacement costs 10k.

this is the driver size linkage. It's almost impossible to move. Passenger size joint seems fine. Is it possible to take this to a metal worker/mechanic and have them un-sieze it?

@Vixit, as discussed with a fellow TBHP-ian, un-freezing it is not likely possible. My wipers have been moving with a jerky motion making noise, and we had used WD40 on that. It worked for a very short time but was back as before. I have today picked up the wiper set (motor + link arms) from @speed79's scrapped Storme - hoping the problem I have will be resolved. Your problem looks more severe.

Btw, it's been a little while since you posted that. Have you done the replacement ?

[viXit]

Originally Posted by condor

Relays were good. However, the culprit turned out to be a loose clip on the cable connecting the battery to the starter motor. At the starter motor end, there are two types of connectors on this cable: a clip or a regular nut to hold the cable down. The problem noticed in my Storme was because it has a clip type connector.

Thanks for the heads up. I think our cars being of similar age is a great thing. I can just look up issues you face and escape it

Btw is it correct that the Storme cannot be jump-started - the battery in the vehicle must be good. In other words, if the battery goes dead, then we need to either charge that battery outside and put it back in, or place a good battery in the vehicle to make it start. Has anyone else faced this ?

I have dhakka started my car several times. Couple of times in 2019 I tried jump starting it with my grand i10, It didn't work, so I pushed the car and put it into gear while cranking at the same time, it worked.

But I remember trying with my Honda city diesel , and it worked.

I recently went to help an endeavour which wasn't able to start on it's own.
We kept the cars connected for half hour, and tried jump starting, nothing worked. Had to get a new battery for the endy.

Originally Posted by ph03n!x

Speaking purely from an electrical circuit perspective - I don't see why jump starting the Storme would be a challenge if battery is the issue. As long as the donor battery has adequate capacity to take the load, electrons are saying they'll do the work

Originally Posted by condor

@Vixit, as discussed with a fellow TBHP-ian, un-freezing it is not likely possible. My wipers have been moving with a jerky motion making noise, and we had used WD40 on that. It worked for a very short time but was back as before. I have today picked up the wiper set (motor + link arms) from @speed79's scrapped Storme - hoping the problem I have will be resolved. Your problem looks more severe.

Btw, it's been a little while since you posted that. Have you done the replacement ?

Yes sir.
Will post a more detailed post in a bit.

[condor]

Thanks, Vixit.

This thread is to discuss and learn from each other

Originally Posted by viXit

Couple of times in 2019 I tried jump starting it with my grand i10, It didn't work, so I pushed the car and put it into gear while cranking at the same time, it worked..

Using an i10 will not work. That i10 would have may be a 45 Ah battery ? We use a 80Ah. The supplying battery needs to be of at least same rating as the discharged one.

So looks like these big guys need a battery replacement and the jump start wont work. Wonder if any one has tried in XUV / Fortuner.

@Ph03nix - looks like the person who told me was correct. Something we need to remember.

[viXit]

First two jobs done on the car after crossing 1L kms

1. Wiper linkage service
2. Battery Terminal cleanup

As mentioned in previous posts, my wipers performance was lacking. I had coated the glass with Collinite No.845 to aid water repellency on Sai_Sailendra's advice

He advised me that it can make the wipers a little jumpy unless there's heavy rain. Lived like that for a while. Then noticed that the wipers were sweeping quite slowly. My wipers needed to be replaced anyway so I bought new Bosch frameless wipers. The wipe was awesome but the wipers did not go back to resting position. They had moved a little higher and were looking ugly. I couldn't get them to go back to old flat position.

Last straw was when after a week, the wipers were barely crawling across the windshield, it took 4 seconds to go from rest to 90° .

So!
Armed with my trusty friend WD40, I set off to fix this issue and save my folks the pain of spending 20k at the SVC. I genuinely hoped they'd pay me at least half. I was mistaken

Popped off the top of the cowl, cleaned it up. This was the second or 3rd cleaning in 2 years, with a closed parking, this still accumulates a lot of trash

Removed the wipers,

Next, got the entire cowl out.

This is how it looks without the cowl, You can see the wipers linkage assembly. The wiper motor is attached to it, but tucked under the metal.

Broke some stuff,
I had replaced the two pipes that carry water to the jets from the junction last year. But below the y junction was stock pipe. I broke the joint while trying to unplug the pipes to remove the cowl. Will replace with maruti joints in a while.

The pipe



The broken joint

This is the joint which has the swivel for the linkage. You can see the Rust at the joint, it had caused the entire assembly to seize.

Undid all bolts and got the assembly out of the car.

Cleaned the Drains below cowl , won't get the opportunity again.

Took all the stuff home with some cleaning supplies to help dissolve the years of deposits. Brought it to the balcony/garden, much to the dismay of the ladies of the house.

This is the backside of the spindle on the assembly.
there is a small C clip if you look closely, this holds the spindle inside the space in which it rotates.

This is what the spindles look like.

The spindle rotates inside the hollow cylinder, there was rust formed and the spindle stayed locked inside the space. The spindle has a small extension, which move when the spindle rotates, one was jammed completely, I tried hammering too, nothing helped, The other spindle was tough too, but was rotation about 15 degrees each way.

If you look at this picture above, the black rods are the linkages that connect the moving part on the motor to both the spindles. Each spindle rotates to move one of the wipers.

After popping the black linkage off, there is the extension on the spindle you can use for leverage to try and wiggle it loose.

This is how the spindles look

I brought a long rod and put it over the spindle's arm, using it as leverage and spent an hour moving it back and forth, drowning it and my hands in WD40, finally got the spindles out of the space they got jammed in.

They had a lot of gunk on them, as seen in the picture above, used a metal wire brush to cut my fingers, and brush the gunk off the spindles metal surface which spins. Since it's metal on metal contact when they're spinning I brushed the inside of the cylinder and greased it before putting it all back.

After cleaning they looked like this, brushed the rust off of all washers too.

Before and after

Took a hundred more pictures with the intention of creating a separate thread for this. But most of it is self explanatory anyway, see a bolt? it needs to come off.

It's quite easy to get the cowl out, but this entire ordeal took a few days off my life. I had given up on the seized spindles since I saw no way to get them loose, I researched part numbers etc. to buy from lucas directly. But had the idea of screwing everything back to the metal linkage frame which mounts the motor, and using a rod for leverage.

I had to use the car without wipers for 2 days in the rain, so I waxed the glass, had excellent beading, but below 40 kmph it just makes the glass opaque with a thousand convex lenses all over your glass.

I cleaned and dressed the cowl and other plastics in McGuire's dressing, it just kept drinking it non-stop, plastic was totally dry.



I just put everything back the way it was and it works fine, but a new issue has presented itself. When I push the wiper control stalk down for ONE WIPE. It doesn't do one full wipe. It just moves for as long as I hold the stalk down.

If I release the stalk in the middle of a wipe, the wipers will freeze there in the middle of the windshield.

So I push the stalk one step up, for the intermittent wipe and then back down. it functions the same way as the one touch down used to work.


I lubed everything while putting everything back, every bolt every contact, but I'm sure it will have to be opened once again in my ownership, most of the rubber boots have aged and torn away.

[condor]

Thanks, @Vixit. How difficult was it to pull out the wiper motor + arms ?

The guy here tried quite a bit, and finally used a hammer and sharp object to move away the surrounding metal (especially in the center /below the middle point of the glass) to get it out.

[viXit]

Also cleaned up the battery terminals.
cleaned and put new insulation and tape on the ground wire, greased the terminals with some generic bosch lithium based grease.

This was the terminal before


After cleaning and greasing, took a lot of effort.


The ground




.

Originally Posted by condor

@Ph03nix - looks like the person who told me was correct. Something we need to remember.

Somehow I'm not convinced, I will try it when my battery is weak with a car using a bigger battery, Did the person give any reason?

Originally Posted by condor

Thanks, @Vixit. How difficult was it to pull out the wiper motor + arms ?

The guy here tried quite a bit, and finally used a hammer and sharp object to move away the surrounding metal (especially in the center /below the middle point of the glass) to get it out.

It was extremely easy pulling the assembly out,Wiper arms too are just one bolt on each arm.

did he try attempting all the repair work while the assembly was still on the car?

Only difficult part was getting the spindles out of the surrounding metal. Initially I didn't even see the C clip holding the spindle, a member of Tata safari whatsapp group Harish told me about it. But even after removing that C clip it was jammed tight. It was so tough that I had given up and used the car like that for 2 days thinking I'll just buy new.

Oh I used a hammer too!
And damaged the thread on the spindle, When I was putting everything back, the last bolt which holds the wiper arm down was not tightening onto the spindle because of the damaged thread. We had to bring out the angle grinder and shave off one thread from the top. Dad to the rescue , he helped with this last bit at 11 in the night after a long day of flying.







Enjoying the storme as of now, it's an awesome car, can't arrive on a good upgrade from this

[ph03n!x]

Originally Posted by condor

...
...
@Ph03nix - looks like the person who told me was correct. Something we need to remember.

I'll be crossing B'lore on my way to Hyd this Friday or so, and a jumpstart cable is a part of my boot - if you're game, we can have a quick experiment if a Thar bab jumpstart a Safari or not

[condor]

Originally Posted by ph03n!x

I'll be crossing B'lore on my way to Hyd this Friday or so, and a jumpstart cable is a part of my boot - if you're game, we can have a quick experiment if a Thar can jumpstart a Safari or not

Hey -good idea. But that means about 4 days including festival time to find Safari with a dead battery.


I think you'll take the NICE road ? What time approx ?

[speed79]

Originally Posted by condor

I have today picked up the wiper set (motor + link arms) from @speed79's scrapped Storme - hoping the problem I have will be resolved.

Good that you picked up the part from the scrap dealer. I hope it solves your problem. I was just wondering why both you and Vixit got this issue with wiper unit? Do you park the Storme outside in rain? What vintage were your cars? I always parked my Oct 2015 Storme in covered parking, at home and office. The scrapper had commented that my car engine bay was as good as in showroom condition (apart from the accident damage).

OT. I sold my UP regd 2004 Alto to the same scrapper on Saturday. Got delivery of Punch AMT Kaziranga on Sunday. Baby Punch being parked in place of Storme along the aunt Vista.