Team-BHP - Suspension problem on my Mahindra XUV700

Quote:

Originally Posted by adneo (Post 5306308)

The best reference for measurement is the outer rim of the wheel hub cap as thats a static perimeter and if u bend down to get eyes at level u will see that it exactly 10 mm.

Btw its just not the Rear but both front and rear RHS ride heights have come down and it was validated against a normal Diesel AT variant.

My point is simple the first thing any OE wud ask fornis to take the struts out and check compression rates, damages, leakes etc. But they are just giving me a run around.

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From the pics. it is not clear since the alloy center caps are present and both pics are taken from different angle. If will be helpful if you can post a pic which shows the visible sag.

The ride height is solely dependent on springs and the spring rubber mounts. The struts have no role in this area.

And 10mm difference between the left and the right side is not sufficient to show a 'visible' sag IMHO.

The other problems that you mentioned are likely to be caused by weak struts which, unless there is a leak in the strut, the service center will not be inclined to remove and check. I suggest you take the service center guys in a TD car on the same roads in another XUV to see if the problem is reproducible in TD car as well. Maybe that will convince them better

Quote:

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki (Post 5306322)

I am not sure if ride height solely depends on the springs since the suspension is counter balanced by the spring and struts.

If we take out the struts a car cant maintain its ride height just with the springs since the stiffness/softness is a fine balance maintained between the spring rate and damper resistance.

Clearly, the service center folks you have talked to are incompetent, I suggest you visit another one. Being in Bangalore, you have a lot of options. @abirnale has a beautiful ownership thread in team-bhp where he has detailed his positive service center experiences.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EV NXT (Post 5306246)

It’s getting difficult to ascertain who is worse in this area - Tata Or Mahindra.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrakeDancer (Post 5306315)

It's also why I never recommend any of my loved ones to go for Tata or Mahindra if they are thinking of spending anything above 10 lakhs. They might be trying but they are streets behind the Japanese and Germans when it comes to sorting out fundamental issues like these before they hand over the vehicle to the customer.

At the risk of being off offtopic, let me say this, as someone needs to point this out. It is interesting to see baseless statements like these whenever an issue is reported in Mahindra or Tata threads. I'm in no way a Mahindra fanboy, and I own a VAG car currently. But we need to stop these baseless generalizations formed without any facts. For example, take a look at Kushaq or Compass threads and you will see that much more serious issues are reported there

Just recently, someone reported many serious issues (which need as much visibility as this one or even more) in the Compass thread here, but it didn't create a new thread. That issue is not only limited to just one user. There are many users with similar issues. Multiple rattles in a car that is supposedly "well-built" (who knows what metric is used to measure that) and costs a bomb is okay, but the issue reported in this thread somehow warrants generalization?

There are no proofs whatsoever to say that Mahindra cars have more issues than say a European car. It would be really nice if we can try to stay objective in our discussions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Alchemist (Post 5306397)

Speaking of objectivity, it's funny that you are comparing rattles in a car with an issue that is 'objectively' more serious than that, that of a suspension sagging problem as detailed in this post. I don't think it's a fair comparison at all. Plus, I did not advocate for any particular brand here so I'm not sure why anyone would get triggered by the post unless they were rooting for a particular brand.

The levels of refinement that we get from the Japanese manufacturers and Germans are actually far better than what Tata or Mahindra are able to offer. Which is not a slight on Tata or Mahindra but just a way of saying that they have a long way to go before being talked about in the same sentence. There's no point in bigging them up when they aren't there yet. Which is not to say that the Japs or Germans are perfect, far from it. When it comes to their India specific models they are not really as robust as the models you'd find abroad and there is significant cost cutting. But then we are talking about larger issues like expectations from a market in a developing country and loose consumer protection laws in comparison to, say, Europe.

Lastly, I'm not sure you'd get any proof of my assertion, because it's all derived from the experiences of other people around me. Maybe you have an entirely different set of experiences and that's alright. You don't see me going to any of those Jeep, Skoda threads and making claims based on my personal experience. That is where we need to take a departure from being objective, because otherwise we'll just end up negating the experience of other people.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adneo (Post 5306348)

Unfortunately this is not true and we learnt it first hand when the struts of our Esteem had failed. The car literally lost the gap between the wheel arch and the wheels since the Esteem has softer springs for ride comfort.

You can try it tourself, take the struts out and let the car rest on the ground.

Ok. But my experience is different. My i20's front right strut had failed. However, the right end did not collapse. The strut had lost all its oil and when it was removed there was no compression or rebound action in the strut.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki (Post 5306451)

From the sounds of it your experience sounds like a stuck strut which caused it ride height to stay same and fixed. But like I said it’s a complex mix and match for example it’s common to see leaf spring suspension running without struts and they retain the ride height by virtue of their stiffness.

I guess without risking further diagression let’s agree that in any case the Strut assembly had to be taken off for physical inspection because the metallic sound when the suspension runs out of travel while going through a deep pothole could be another indication that the bump stops are not appropriate or worse have given away.

If the vehicle is rolling only to a specific side that should serve as enough evidence to go through the suspension physical checking drill.

From your pics, the measurement from body line to hub/wheelcap centre seems to be not very much off probably a few mm which is OK for any vehicle.

There are 2 inherent flaws in the accuracy of the posted pics/measurement.

1. Bodypanel plastic cladding to wheel centre measurements are not the most accurate, as you rely on the body panel/cladding tolerances to measure a road component. Try to take off that black cladding and then stick to only the body panel and measure until the bottom of rim.
2. The second picture seems to be taken from a different height than the first picture (Parallax error possible for us as viewers). For me both looks like 46cms+/-5mm

Please post some measurements done with and without load on both sides.

@Sagarpadaki, If it is a high pressure gas filled strut it might influence the ride height a bit, but Spring is the major contributor for ride height.

Sorry to hear about your ordeal. I own a 3OO and I had many apprehensions before buying an M&M. Trust me, my ownership experience has been a smooth sail so far. There are zero niggles, rattles in the car. There was a small ORVM rattle which was resolved by calling me to the service center. The staff was super cooperative and obliged to all my requests. They heard me out patiently and provided a solution to the problem. The first service was a breeze too. Contrary to people's perception about M&M's service, I have had a very good experience thus far. The employees are very capable, trust me you will get a fix soon. Please try tagging the higher officials of M&M through Twitter. These kind of articles get a lot of traction on social media. I am sure M&M is watching closely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adneo (Post 5305952)

On the 3rd week I suddenly noticed that the car was tilted to the right even while parked in our basement.
......

A visible tilt in the car is something I have never experienced. Mine is also an AWD AT Ax7L. ***touchwood*** My Red Sparkle is doing fine so far at 7K Kms plus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Alchemist (Post 5306397)

Yes, thanks. Happy to redirect him to my usual ASC if he wants to get it revalidated. Those guys may not be able to solve the problem at first but will definitely not do a timepass with you or your car.

I am also aware of PPS at Thanisandra (know a few folks there, but I prefer Chrome Motors) - I have forwarded this to their service head too. Not sure how much they will attend as they know me as a non-returning customer :D I bought my car from PPS, but haven't gone back for servicing - I was clear about that at the time of booking itself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adneo (Post 5305952)

Hi All,

I own a Diesel AWD AT and while I love the car for its handling, performance and capabilities, the after sales support which Mahindra enables through their dealers is just not mature enough to cater to a customer base spending 30 L OTR.

On our way from Kolkata to Bangalore we could distinctly feel that the right hand side suspension was losing its strength and it degraded so much that the vehicle started to roll like crazy around left hand corners.
But at the same time it would ride flat around right hand corners.

This is bad. Especially for an AWD, the suspension is crucial. This should be a critical miss from Mahindra, if this is a common problem across the cars. I hope Mahindra rectifies this issue and rectifies it soon.