My Tweaked Wagon R

aditya.86 · 4th November 2008, 09:21

@valhallen.282- Can this highway tuning be done by Hyundai authorized service too???? I am used to a lot of highway driving and i drive a santro with a free flow and a K&N universal filter so i guess with your highway tuning it will just take off

valhallen.282 · 4th November 2008, 10:32

its just an optimization nothing else and i figure it can be for any vehicle. i drive at those hours when the road is free. ask your service advisor what can be done for higher mileage on the highway while not cutting in on power. i'm no expert i only collect whatever scraps of info i can.

aditya.86 · 4th November 2008, 10:37

Mine is a 2 and a half yr old car and till date have not gathered any knowledge from my service advisor. Its actually the other way round. I tell them what the problem is and how to fix it.

Authorised service people are hopeless is what i feel.

valhallen.282 · 4th November 2008, 11:05

I guess thats the unfortunate part. we all believe that we know best and so never learn to ask questions the right way. nobody said you shouldn't tell them how. but then again a lot of them are trained in a service workshop to do exactly this job. i always tend to catch the most senior guy. i believed the same thing as you. but they know their jobs better right? i mean its their bread and butter. there has to be SOMETHING they are good for other than just doing the mechanical work. Asking my advisors has always given me good info. though i can't say you are wrong.

SLK · 4th November 2008, 11:29

@valhallen.282

OK - Now I have a 8 year Old WagonR- done 75-80k Kms.

I have no tuning in there of any sort - and neither do I believe MASS are capable to do anything positive. If they touch a thing out of line - they screw it!

Your Max shift points mentioned are at the redline RPM for 1st and 2nd gear. For the third its less than the redline! so is the 4th.

My point - with stock filter and no tuning - I can do redlines in my car in 1st, 2nd AND 3rd gear@110km/h - which is better than yours? - and my engine is 8years old and working.

As for the FE - I can get 18km/l on the highway WITH AC but keeping the speed between 80-100km/h. Now if you can get the same at slightly higher speeds - its just the K&N effect and not your service engineer's.

Service engineers (the one's I've encountered) seem to have one objective in life - to fool the customer.

BTW @people - it doesn't matter what your shift points are on the highway if you are driving in the 5th for 99% of the time. Some people drive like this - upshift like F1 racers and once in top gear they just don't downshift at same speeds therefore crawl in the 5th even at 50-60km/h thereafter.

As for the original query:
If there's actually a problem - its more likely to be a mechanical thing/ adjustment. I think MASS should be able to solve it since its an apparent thing.

valhallen.282 · 4th November 2008, 12:04

I never said it doesn't do it in the first place. judicious driving is the question. i was in the first place merely pointing out how far you can push without straining. its not a question of better i'm not here to win an argument or a race. his point was that there isn't enough power. maybe my approach to answering it was wrong. but i was merely saying use a lower gear get your power and move up once through. mileage for a wagonr has never been an issue. if combined with judicious driving you will get an increase is all i was saying. but i guess here it became a test of what i know or believe or not. as for MASS. Yes they do mess up they in fact washed my power steering controller. for which i had to shell out 7k, since they wouldn't replace it. so i'm no great believer either. only saying that use their knowledge they are not completely useless or lost. just misguided. gathering knowledge is harder than one might accept.

eddiedsouza · 4th November 2008, 12:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by valhallen.282

...i never mentioned any DOWNSHIFTS. I only spoke about up. lowest speeds in each gear are as follows for me. 2nd-5/10, 3rd-25, 4th-35, 5th-50. ... also i have a stock replacement k&n thanks to which i get 2kpl extra as compared to the regular 14-16.

ALSO for the clarity of all please note that i mentioned those as the optimal MAX possible speed the car will take with 2people and luggage. without killing itself or straining the internals. also i just realised that you'll are presuming those to be MY shift points when i drive. they are a little lower and i don't typically use first much. except in dense traffic. my bad if you'll thought THAT is the way i shift. of course a stock replacement K&N does wonders for the mileage. while letting the engine breathe better. so can rev higher than most stock cars.

Very interesting info, thanks for sharing. Yes, I think we all did fall into thinking that those figures you mentioned were your shift points, and were quite amazed

Hmmm... if changing filters improves FE as well, then I must learn more about these K&N filters and see if I can get one here and install/have it installed. With stock filter, no tuning and careful driving (max 80 kph) I get a semi-highway^^ FE of 18.3 kpl; changing to a better filter should help improve that even more.

^^ semi-highway: In Goa, roads are increasingly clogged with traffic, and not being widened enough, so even on what we laughingly call a national highway here, sometimes you're forced to crawl along in 3rd or 4th gear for sizeable stretches. It's not really city driving, which is more like 1st/2nd/3rd, but still not highway driving, which would be cruising in 5th gear.

Cheers
Ed.

eddiedsouza · 4th November 2008, 13:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by mobike008

Downshifts really dont matter when we are trying to extract that much extra mile from a liter.

Actually, I've been wondering about that. Was having a debate with a friend some time back, where my viewpoint was that using engine braking to slow the vehicle down gradually (for, say, speed-breakers I know are ahead because I drive the road frequently) is better for FE than hitting the clutch and using the brakes, then shifting down to 2nd or 1st to get going after the speed-breaker. My friend's viewpoint was that (at least for a carburreted engine) though the main throttle body/butterfly would close off air and fuel flow, the idle jet would still be supplying fuel to the engine which was at some revs. Neither of us could guess what would be the case for an MPFI engine, though.

BTW, I don't mean drastic engine loading, like shifting into 3rd or 2nd at 70 kph - that is only for emergencies, when you think your brakes are failing - but instead keeping off the gas pedal, slowing down with engine braking till it reaches near the lower speed limit for the gear - then caressing the brakes a little while I declutch and shift into the next lower gear. This tends to both maintain a kind of linear deceleration as well as help reduce speed (and thus engine revs when the clutch is let out again) to match the "comfortable" ranges for each gear.

So I still hold that gentle and gradual engine braking is better for FE than hitting the clutch and brakes. Please do go ahead and correct and enlighten if this isn't right.

And since we're talking about FE anyway - I also do the "hypermiling" burn-and-coast trick when stuck in lower gears in slow-moving traffic - such as on bridges with speed limited to 30 or 40 kph - accelerate smoothly to just below the speed limit, and then declutch and coast along smoothly, engine idling, until I need to repeat the cycle. I only declutch; I know that isn't optimal hypermiling for FE, but with the WagonR's sometimes-obstinate gearbox, I like to keep the gearbox engaged; during the first few times I tried this by shifting to neutral, I had to struggle a couple of times to get back into gear, including tapping the gas and pumping the clutch, before I could re-engage 3rd or 2nd. In traffic, that is NOT comfortable!

I don't do the hypermiling stuff in 5th (tried it once or twice, don't like the unfamiliar feel of unpowered drive wheels at moderate speeds of 65 to 80, seems to alter the handling).

Cheers
Ed.

valhallen.282 · 5th November 2008, 12:04

@ED i agree with the gearbox bit. it can be very obstinate at times. my dad finds it hard to get it down from 5th all the time. he used to drive an omni so used to 4 gears. dunno about the hypermiling bit but using engine braking and natural friction and slowing process is better than just stomping on the clutch and brakes. and downshifts are just as important. it decides where in the rev band the next gear is gonna hit when you let go of the clutch. so the lower it enters the less fuel it consumes is my opinion.

esteem_lover · 5th November 2008, 12:56

The shift speeds you have suggested for a highway drive of a WagonR is outrageous. The WagonR's engine is not designed to hit the rev limiter all the time & i am yet to see a driver do that. On the other hand it actually tolerates pretty low speed gear changes which are very useful driving in city. Please do not get excited & exaggerate. cheers

P.S Taking a turn with the left foot on the brake at 100 kmph in a wagon R ??? WoW !!!

valhallen.282 · 5th November 2008, 14:08

@Esteemlover i only said that if you REALLY WANTED the power you COULD go upto there. i never said you should do it. yeah leftfoot braking its pretty stable at that speed and its not as hard as it seems. though i DO NOT recommend that you try it AT ALL. if you don't know how to and without a runoff area it can get very hairy.

eddiedsouza · 6th November 2008, 16:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by valhallen.282

@ED i agree with the gearbox bit. it can be very obstinate at times. my dad finds it hard to get it down from 5th all the time. he used to drive an omni so used to 4 gears. dunno about the hypermiling bit but using engine braking and natural friction and slowing process is better than just stomping on the clutch and brakes. and downshifts are just as important. it decides where in the rev band the next gear is gonna hit when you let go of the clutch. so the lower it enters the less fuel it consumes is my opinion.

I don't have problems with 5th; my main probs with the WagonR are with 1st and 2nd gears, and between them, and with reverse. Sometimes, of course, all gears seem to go into non-cooperation mode

so even though I want to go forward, I have to release the hand brake to see if the car rolls even an inch or two, then keep pumping the clutch, blipping the throttle, and trying to shift into reverse. Once the gearbox has finally gotten the idea that I want it to transmit power from engine to the rest of the drivetrain... then I can shift into first and start taking off. Other times, when first is being obstinate, I shift into third, then second, then first - all while stationary - before taking off...

Yesterday or the day before, I did a search on this site and found a couple of posts (IIRC one from Rehaan, a mod) that unequivocally stated that when using engine braking on MPFI engines, the ECU senses the prevailing conditions and shuts off ALL fuel flow to the engine, saving fuel. Sadly, despite searching for the last ten minutes, I can't find those posts now (grrr). But the upshot is that on MPFI engines, using engine braking also increases FE.

Re rev band - I agree, but I think that it's still possible to break off gear teeth if you try to shift into too low a gear at too high a road speed. I apparently did this to the gears in the (oh, wait, bad language is forbidden... sighh) KB 125 I owned some time ago. The metal quality for most of the drivetrain was bad, according to some enthusiasts and mechs here in Goa, but I managed to break a couple of teeth off second gear and first because I stomped into them (was basically trying to see how well I'd get along without a clutch cable, if it were to break). I dunno about syncromesh gearboxes, perhaps that tech prevents this - it sure doesn't help shift gears easier, as evinced by my WagonR gearbox! :-/

Cheers
Ed.

valhallen.282 · 10th November 2008, 17:09

well ed get that gearbox checked i'm certain something can be done about it. anyway i am just back from the bangy meet and i have a few problems. clutch seems to have started giving way now doesn't hold on like it used to. stalled a few times and three hard shifts along with one false shift to 5th. also had some trouble with my front left tyre. some premature balding compared to the others. will check other threads and post again.

eddiedsouza · 11th November 2008, 12:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by valhallen.282

well ed get that gearbox checked i'm certain something can be done about it. anyway i am just back from the bangy meet and i have a few problems. clutch seems to have started giving way now doesn't hold on like it used to. stalled a few times and three hard shifts along with one false shift to 5th. also had some trouble with my front left tyre. some premature balding compared to the others. will check other threads and post again.

Oh, no doubt they can do something to/about it - question is whether it will improve or worsen the shifting

I remember telling them about this initially and they adjusted the clutch - to the point where it didn't engage at all for three quarters of the travel, and then grabbed hold in one jerk shortly after that :-/
After that experience I'm of the opinion that I shouldn't ask them to mess with it unless it is actually broken...
Yea, I have the same probs with clutch. Perhaps an artifact of running the AC in low gears :-( which I later learnt was not a good idea at all... again, I will wait till it is a problem, and only then ask them to attend to it. Right now, the car runs smoothly in top gear and at moderate speeds, and is driveable. Like yours, it stalls occasionally, or jerks a little when letting clutch out in lower gears, but I can live with that for now...

Re the premature balding - no idea except perhaps bad shock... perhaps someone else can suggest from their experience.

Cheers
Ed.

4th November 2008, 09:21	#16
aditya.86 BHPian Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: UAE Posts: 308 Thanked: 108 Times	@valhallen.282- Can this highway tuning be done by Hyundai authorized service too???? I am used to a lot of highway driving and i drive a santro with a free flow and a K&N universal filter so i guess with your highway tuning it will just take off
	() Thanks

4th November 2008, 10:32	#17
valhallen.282 BHPian Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Bangalore Posts: 331 Thanked: 196 Times	its just an optimization nothing else and i figure it can be for any vehicle. i drive at those hours when the road is free. ask your service advisor what can be done for higher mileage on the highway while not cutting in on power. i'm no expert i only collect whatever scraps of info i can.
	() Thanks

4th November 2008, 10:37	#18
aditya.86 BHPian Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: UAE Posts: 308 Thanked: 108 Times	Mine is a 2 and a half yr old car and till date have not gathered any knowledge from my service advisor. Its actually the other way round. I tell them what the problem is and how to fix it. Authorised service people are hopeless is what i feel.
	() Thanks

4th November 2008, 11:05	#19
valhallen.282 BHPian Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Bangalore Posts: 331 Thanked: 196 Times	I guess thats the unfortunate part. we all believe that we know best and so never learn to ask questions the right way. nobody said you shouldn't tell them how. but then again a lot of them are trained in a service workshop to do exactly this job. i always tend to catch the most senior guy. i believed the same thing as you. but they know their jobs better right? i mean its their bread and butter. there has to be SOMETHING they are good for other than just doing the mechanical work. Asking my advisors has always given me good info. though i can't say you are wrong.
	() Thanks

4th November 2008, 11:29	#20
SLK Senior - BHPian Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Nomad Posts: 1,802 Thanked: 1,421 Times	@valhallen.282 OK - Now I have a 8 year Old WagonR- done 75-80k Kms. I have no tuning in there of any sort - and neither do I believe MASS are capable to do anything positive. If they touch a thing out of line - they screw it! Your Max shift points mentioned are at the redline RPM for 1st and 2nd gear. For the third its less than the redline! so is the 4th. My point - with stock filter and no tuning - I can do redlines in my car in 1st, 2nd AND 3rd gear@110km/h - which is better than yours? - and my engine is 8years old and working. As for the FE - I can get 18km/l on the highway WITH AC but keeping the speed between 80-100km/h. Now if you can get the same at slightly higher speeds - its just the K&N effect and not your service engineer's. Service engineers (the one's I've encountered) seem to have one objective in life - to fool the customer. BTW @people - it doesn't matter what your shift points are on the highway if you are driving in the 5th for 99% of the time. Some people drive like this - upshift like F1 racers and once in top gear they just don't downshift at same speeds therefore crawl in the 5th even at 50-60km/h thereafter. As for the original query: If there's actually a problem - its more likely to be a mechanical thing/ adjustment. I think MASS should be able to solve it since its an apparent thing. Last edited by SLK : 4th November 2008 at 11:40.
	() Thanks

4th November 2008, 12:04	#21
valhallen.282 BHPian Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Bangalore Posts: 331 Thanked: 196 Times	I never said it doesn't do it in the first place. judicious driving is the question. i was in the first place merely pointing out how far you can push without straining. its not a question of better i'm not here to win an argument or a race. his point was that there isn't enough power. maybe my approach to answering it was wrong. but i was merely saying use a lower gear get your power and move up once through. mileage for a wagonr has never been an issue. if combined with judicious driving you will get an increase is all i was saying. but i guess here it became a test of what i know or believe or not. as for MASS. Yes they do mess up they in fact washed my power steering controller. for which i had to shell out 7k, since they wouldn't replace it. so i'm no great believer either. only saying that use their knowledge they are not completely useless or lost. just misguided. gathering knowledge is harder than one might accept.
	() Thanks

5th November 2008, 12:04	#24
valhallen.282 BHPian Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Bangalore Posts: 331 Thanked: 196 Times	@ED i agree with the gearbox bit. it can be very obstinate at times. my dad finds it hard to get it down from 5th all the time. he used to drive an omni so used to 4 gears. dunno about the hypermiling bit but using engine braking and natural friction and slowing process is better than just stomping on the clutch and brakes. and downshifts are just as important. it decides where in the rev band the next gear is gonna hit when you let go of the clutch. so the lower it enters the less fuel it consumes is my opinion.
	() Thanks

5th November 2008, 12:56	#25
esteem_lover Senior - BHPian Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Madras/Py Posts: 7,556 Thanked: 513 Times View My Garage	The shift speeds you have suggested for a highway drive of a WagonR is outrageous. The WagonR's engine is not designed to hit the rev limiter all the time & i am yet to see a driver do that. On the other hand it actually tolerates pretty low speed gear changes which are very useful driving in city. Please do not get excited & exaggerate. cheers P.S Taking a turn with the left foot on the brake at 100 kmph in a wagon R ??? WoW !!! Last edited by esteem_lover : 5th November 2008 at 12:57.
	() Thanks

5th November 2008, 14:08	#26
valhallen.282 BHPian Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Bangalore Posts: 331 Thanked: 196 Times	@Esteemlover i only said that if you REALLY WANTED the power you COULD go upto there. i never said you should do it. yeah leftfoot braking its pretty stable at that speed and its not as hard as it seems. though i DO NOT recommend that you try it AT ALL. if you don't know how to and without a runoff area it can get very hairy.
	() Thanks

10th November 2008, 17:09	#28
valhallen.282 BHPian Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Bangalore Posts: 331 Thanked: 196 Times	well ed get that gearbox checked i'm certain something can be done about it. anyway i am just back from the bangy meet and i have a few problems. clutch seems to have started giving way now doesn't hold on like it used to. stalled a few times and three hard shifts along with one false shift to 5th. also had some trouble with my front left tyre. some premature balding compared to the others. will check other threads and post again.
	() Thanks