[humyum]

So the Synchroniser ring bug hits my car. The gearbox was overhauled at 76 thousand km and it was running smoothly till now.

At 1 lakh 21 thousand kilometer, the 2nd gear engages sometimes and sometimes does not. When it does not engage it behaves like you are hitting a brick on the gearstick which wont budge. Many a times I have caused a deadlock behind me since it's too fast for 1st and too slow for second, 2nd is the only gear I need at that moment.

Any idea about the cost. Ravi Automobiles is telling me the gearbox overhaul cost is 8500+ Parts extra+ since my clutch plate/pressure plate/release bearing/Flywheel are like 70 thousand km run, we will change that also.

I find the Rs 8500 labour cost just for gearbox overhaul as absolute nonsense, isn't it too high ?

Kindly bring out the costs please. I am planning to get this done soon.

[amitpunjani]

Originally Posted by humyum

So the Synchroniser ring bug hits my car. The gearbox was overhauled at 76 thousand km and it was running smoothly till now.

At 1 lakh 21 thousand kilometer, the 2nd gear engages sometimes and sometimes does not. When it does not engage it behaves like you are hitting a brick on the gearstick which wont budge. Many a times I have caused a deadlock behind me since it's too fast for 1st and too slow for second, 2nd is the only gear I need at that moment.

Any idea about the cost. Ravi Automobiles is telling me the gearbox overhaul cost is 8500+ Parts extra+ since my clutch plate/pressure plate/release bearing/Flywheel are like 70 thousand km run, we will change that also.

I find the Rs 8500 labour cost just for gearbox overhaul as absolute nonsense, isn't it too high ?

Kindly bring out the costs please. I am planning to get this done soon.

The charges are reasonable, if you go to mass, just the labour charges are Rs 4500 and taxes.

[govigov]

Humyum, easy way out is to double de clutch. It should work and help you out in sticky situations.

[sandeep3in]

Another issue and this time it was the clutch pedal loosing its resistance , did the bleeding initially and covered around 500 KM and again the problem repeated .

Could be a hydraulic leak or a cylinders(both master/slave went kaput).

If one needs to replace the slave cylinder it requires opening up the gear box .

I was contemplating to go for Scross, i have doubts if the issue is solved in the S-cross platform .

[paragsachania]

So, this issue finally crops up in my Ertiga at 97,000 kms & yes, out of extended warranty!

Off late, shifting from 3rd to 2nd was abnormally difficult and was infrequent without any particular pattern. The car would hesitate to engage to 2nd from 3rd only.

The only work around was double clutching or fooling the system by trying to slot in 1st or 3rd and slot to 2nd and that would work all the times.

The biggest challenge here was because this issue was infrequent and intermittent - Usually as a driver I would be under the impression that it will slot to 2nd without any issues and it does but at times it doesn't. So one cannot really ascertain this and plan the work around and end up losing momentum and then give rest of the tailing traffic a hard time. Luckily, it hasn't been the case so far and whenever this has happened, tailing traffic was either far away in my IRVM or there was none at all.

Simplest of use case would be when approaching a speed breaker and you drop from 3rd to 2nd in city traffic or even when turning at intersections at slower than 20 kmph speeds.

The symptom clearly hints at the Synchronizer Ring failure and the solution is to replace the Ring between 3rd and 2nd Gear.

However, for "complete satisfaction" replacing the clutch plate and the cover assembly is also advised to ensure:

• The issue doesn't resurface due to worn out clutch
• You anyway pay for that labor to replace the ring and as well get the clutch replaced within that labor

The clutch on my Ertiga is stock at 97k and has zero signs of any juddering or hardness even now. In reality, it will pain to replace it for no reason when it would have easily lasted another 30k kms without any issues.

The plan is to get this replaced this week as I am heading out to ghats in next couple of weeks and you really don't want the 2nd gear not to engage when climbing that hairpin !

[dhanushs]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

The only work around was double clutching or fooling the system by trying to slot in 1st or 3rd and slot to 2nd and that would work all the times.
!

You are manually matching the speed, which the synchroniser did for you.

Since most maruti gearboxes have the same problem, I think Maruti should give a labour/part discount. Why don't you try for that?

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by dhanushs

I think Maruti should give a labour/part discount. Why don't you try for that?

I have spoken to the folks at the ASC who said they will "Try to do something".

I plan to write to MSIL on this and see what they have to say. I am sure most of them would have done that anyway.

Honestly, I would pay for normal wear and tear but here I here I need to pay for a part that is defective not because of my driving and apart from that I need to replace a fully healthy clutch set too.

[rakesh_r]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

I have spoken to the folks at the ASC who said they will "Try to do something".

I plan to write to MSIL on this and see what they have to say. I am sure most of them would have done that anyway.

Honestly, I would pay for normal wear and tear but here I here I need to pay for a part that is defective not because of my driving and apart from that I need to replace a fully healthy clutch set too.

Welcome to the club. I faced the similar issue in my old Swift (2010, 70K run). To my misfortune the issue cropped up exactly 2 days before the car was to be delivered to it's new owner. I, as a goodwill gesture paid for the spares and the new owner (also a bhpian) was kind enough to bare the labor cost.
Lets see how the GB of my S Cross 1.6 would last considering the unit is an imported one.

[lone_driver]

This problem surfaced the third time on my 98500 kms run 2013 march swift zdi . Just yesterday I returned from a 3500kms trip and never faced a problem . It surfaced today morning . And its a pain to slot in the 2nd gear . I had got the clutch replaced at 67k kms not due to the wear in it but because a spring in the clutch broke .
I have got the synchroniser ring replaced two times till now under warranty so don't remember how much it costs .

How much does it cost to replace just the synchroniser ring?

[amitpunjani]

Originally Posted by lone_driver

This problem surfaced the third time on my 98500 kms run 2013 march swift zdi . Just yesterday I returned from a 3500kms trip and never faced a problem . It surfaced today morning . And its a pain to slot in the 2nd gear . I had got the clutch replaced at 67k kms not due to the wear in it but because a spring in the clutch broke .
I have got the synchroniser ring replaced two times till now under warranty so don't remember how much it costs .

How much does it cost to replace just the synchroniser ring?

The synch ring cost is approx. 1,700. Major cost is of labor which is about Rs, 4,500. Is your car in extended Warranty? If yes, don't worry about it, MASS will take care.

[lone_driver]

Originally Posted by amitpunjani

The synch ring cost is approx. 1,700. Major cost is of labor which is about Rs, 4,500. Is your car in extended Warranty? If yes, don't worry about it, MASS will take care.

The extended warranty got over at 80k kms . I have got it replaced under warranty before . This is the first time I will have to bear the cost .

[Vid6639]

My colleague got the same problem 2 weeks back. I drove the car and immediately diagnosed it to be synchro issue as the revs from 3 to 2 don't allow it to downshift.

Took it to Surakshaa E-city and they replaced the clutch and synchro. Luckily the Ertiga was under extended warranty till July end. He had to bear the cost of the clutch.

This Ertiga had done only 33K kms.

[paragsachania]

Last Friday I went ahead and got the job attended as couple of drives were coming up and I didn't want to "Live" with a crucial issue like this. As part of the job, following elements were replaced:

• Synchronizer rings - 2 Nos (1<->2 Gears, 2<->3 Gears) - 1449/- *2
• Flywheel - 1751/-
• Clutch Plate - 1600/-
• Clutch Plate cover assembly - 1096/-
• Clutch slave cylinder - 2739/-
• Oil Seals & Gaskets - 500/-
• Brake Fluid - 327/-
• Gear/Transmission Oil - 887/-

The major labor charges:

• Unmount/Mount the gearbox - 1350/-
• Replacing the Sync Rings in the Gearbox - 2200/-

The stock clutch had very little signs of ageing at 96000 kms. Since the clutch was replaced, I was finicky about ignoring the flywheel and the slave cylinder and went ahead and replaced the same during this job so that everything related to Gearbox and clutch got complete attention since the car had run considerable kilometers now that I didn't want the flywheel or the Slave cylinder to cause issues later.

Post replacement:

I may have already clocked around 1000 kms after this was replaced last week along a single day 700 kms rainy drive 3 days back on Tuesday covering Coorg - Sakleshpur (Hassan) - Chikmagalur districts.

Had I pushed the replacement of these rings to a latter date, I am sure I would have got into tricky situations during many instances of this drive where there were multiple hair pins along with bad roads that demanded 2nd gear while negotiating the hair pins at much slower pace. I may have downshifted from 3rd to 2nd at least 50-60 times in this drive while managing certain terrains climbing up.

In a nutshell, the issue stands resolved now, completely! New clutch has made little difference except that during take off from stand still, I can make out its a new clutch because of the way it gain momentum. Apart from this, outright acceleration & smoothness of the Clutch pedal remain unchanged.

[motomaniax]

My Ertiga VDI (2012) first faced this issue at about 39K kms under warranty and got it repaired at Rohan Motors, Greater Noida under warranty. Now my car is out of warranty and clocked 45K kms and I am facing the same issue again of not being to downshift from 3rd to 2nd. When I try to do that, it is as if I am hitting a brick wall as others have mentioned. This time, my car is out of warranty and Rohan Motors has agreed to provide some meagre discounts for this work. However, the charges for this repair will indeed be substantial as all of you have faced. Also I fear that this issue will occur again.

What I fail to understand is how can Maruti Suzuki take us all for a ride and not take responsibility for this design oversight. If I had known this earlier, I would never have gone in for a Maruti and would have purchased some better brand with my hard-earned money. As this is an issue faced by many Ertiga owners, should we not get together and contribute some resources to fight this out with Maruti and get compensated for this badly engineered product?

[ChaltiKaNaam]

Having suffering from the same issue, I agree with you all.
I am not sure why even one customer should suffer because of design blunder / inadequate testing by the manufaturer, in this age of free market and fierce competition.
Started facing this issues intermittantly about a little more than a year back on my 2012 ZDi which was still in warranty then. Have got it serviced always with MASS and of late observed charges are getting exorbitant while quality of service deteriorates with time. I also own a Swift VDi from it's second generation which never has had any succh issue so far (touchwood!).
Point is Maruti Suzuki is taking us Indian customers for granted and it's time we should show them we too can stand up to our rights. It's no longer an oligopoly world where one gets to choose a car out of 3 brands and 5 models!
I have appended my experience on consumercomplaints.in too (unsure how much it will help). Among other options we have is to write to Maruti Customer Service Head possibly with an online petition (/signature campaign of sorts). Secondly write to 3rd parties that can help us connect with the right people with the right momentum considering the gravity of the situation e.g. Pehredar program on CNBC Awaaz etc.
Please do let me know your thoughts and let us work towards actioning this early on.
Thanks,
Ashish

Originally Posted by motomaniax

My Ertiga VDI (2012) first faced this issue at about 39K kms under warranty and got it repaired at Rohan Motors, Greater Noida under warranty. Now my car is out of warranty and clocked 45K kms and I am facing the same issue again of not being to downshift from 3rd to 2nd. When I try to do that, it is as if I am hitting a brick wall as others have mentioned. This time, my car is out of warranty and Rohan Motors has agreed to provide some meagre discounts for this work. However, the charges for this repair will indeed be substantial as all of you have faced. Also I fear that this issue will occur again.

What I fail to understand is how can Maruti Suzuki take us all for a ride and not take responsibility for this design oversight. If I had known this earlier, I would never have gone in for a Maruti and would have purchased some better brand with my hard-earned money. As this is an issue faced by many Ertiga owners, should we not get together and contribute some resources to fight this out with Maruti and get compensated for this badly engineered product?