[trrk]

Hi Anup,

Originally Posted by anup_sh

Hi amoghchaphalkar, Amit Tyagi has asked for 2 days specifically to gather representatives from both Good Year and Fiat. I hope they find a solution to it.

Right now the issue is of noise. Let them sort it out for you and they will. When they do that, start enjoying your car.

My Manza's steering wheel was skewed to the left when I took delivery. Since this was a model with airbags, they had to correct it by wheel alignment the next day. I

It is indeed sad to have a problem in a newly bought car. But let it not get in the way of enjoying your new car. In a month and three days, my Manza has travelled more than 3800kms and we have enjoyed it.

[anup_sh]

Originally Posted by trrk

Hi Anup,



Right now the issue is of noise. Let them sort it out for you and they will. When they do that, start enjoying your car.

My Manza's steering wheel was skewed to the left when I took delivery. Since this was a model with airbags, they had to correct it by wheel alignment the next day. I

It is indeed sad to have a problem in a newly bought car. But let it not get in the way of enjoying your new car. In a month and three days, my Manza has travelled more than 3800kms and we have enjoyed it.

Thanks trk. I know that I am definitely going to enjoy the experience once this noise thing gets sorted out. I have one more query to all. I am in touch with Amit Tyagi for coordinating with Good Year people about inspecting my car for noise issue. However I am given a time of approximately mid week (Wed or Thursday) by them. As per them Good Year people take that much time to respond back. Isn't it too late. I first complained to Ravi Bhatia of Fiat on 20th April and first hearing on this issue is scheduled to be on 28th or 29th. What do you all suggest. Is it a normal response time or quiet late?

[anup_sh]

Hi All,

Latest updates on this is that I visited Techno Automotives workshop in Nazafgarh on this Wednesday and met with Amit Srivastava from Fiat, Vinod from Tata, Amit Tyagi - AGM Techno Workshop and Varun. All of us drove in my Linea first and all agreed that noise is an issue but held the verdict till we drove another Linea. On driving the other Linea it was confirmed beyond doubt that my piece has indeed an issue with rear tyres. Two of the rear tyres from the other Linea were stuck to mine one and we drove again but there was hardly any difference. Then Amit from Fiat checked for bearing and the thing that I was dreading from the start came true. It was right rear bearing that was at fault. I do not know how this can be because a mechanical part failure is something very unlikely to happen, a electrical one still I can think but not a bearing but it was true. To just make things worst I also made a collision with a small pole in one of the congested by lanes of Nazafgarh while I was reversing my Linea. Rear bumper and tail light got damaged. So my Linea is now in workshop for both denting-painting and bearing issue and should be available to me by today evening or Saturday. I met one more person there with similar issue of tyre noise but for me it was all silent when compared with my car. It seems to be a pure Good Year GT3 noise issue with him. He already got 2 tyres replaced on warranty for this issue but I do not think that is going to solve this issue. Good Year Assurance might be but not GT3.

On other front, my experience while communicating with Fiat-Tata people is a mixed one. Talking to Ravi Bhatia is a breeze. Never ever it happened that I gave him a call and he had not talked to me in detail. Even when his phone was busy he always reverted back. I can imagine the time pressure that he might be having at his position but he never let that come in way of our interactions. Similarly all my mails to Fiat CEO Rajiv not only got answered on same day but action taken for it was also quiet visible. Lower down the order things do not remain that smooth but still OK. I have yet to hear anyone either from Fiat or Tata at least making, just for the sake of it, an apology for the manufacturing bearing fault or the time and effort that I needed to spend on it. It was something like that is why we provide 2+2 years of warranty and even Toyota cars have issues. Hey you do not need to defend always, sometime acknowledging the mistake and accepting that creates much better impact than giving arguments for it. I do not know if this is the approach taken by other car companies as well but I found it very strange.

This sums up my Linea experience so far. Unfortunately there is very limited that I have written about the actual driving experience but that is because I wanted to do that once all these issues are sorted out. Hopefully that time is just about to come. Till that time I will do the same thing that I have been doing till now, KEEPING MY FINGERS CROSSED

[lalitk25]

Any update on your car.... does the bearing change really changed the scene or there is still some issue?
also what about your repair job.....
seems a bit too much hassle for a brand new car owner.......


Note from Mod : Please use proper capitalization + punctuation and avoid typing...like....this..... Do see THIS THREAD before continuing. Thanks.

[anup_sh]

Originally Posted by lalitk25

Any update on your car.... does the bearing change really changed the scene or there is still some issue?
also what about your repair job.....
seems a bit too much hassle for a brand new car owner.......

Hi Lalit, thanks for your concern. Below are details of things that happened in last one month. Though I will digress here from the niggling issues part but I think it makes sense to put it here logically.

As stated earlier my car was in work shop for right rear tire bearing change and denting-painting for the damage that I caused myself. Instead of Saturday I got it delivered to my home on Sunday. Good things first. After bearing change, tire noise has vanished and what has left now is perfectly normal sound of multijet (so nice to hear the vroom) engine. It has been a big relief to me and for the first time I really enjoyed driving my Linea with out the troublesome noise. Denting and painting has also been very good. I claimed for it and service of claims department at Techno Automobile workshop was very impressive. Special thanks to Devender there who ensure that everything is done in a super quick time with least bothering to me. In total it cost me 1600 something bucks of which 1150 was the cost of complete assembly change for right rear lights that was reimbursed only 50% with it being a plastic part. Was pleasantly surprised to know that rear assembly cost only 2300 because I knew that it cost much more in its peers such as Honda City. Overall my this experience with Tata-Fiat *** has improved a lot from last time. Whole thing was done in a very efficient and courteous manner. Amit and Varun see to it that things are done proactively and I received a number of calls ranging from these guys to Tata-Fiat customer care to personal calls from their Tata-Fiat officials. This gave me a lot of confidence because general perception about Tata-Fiat *** is not that good but having an extensive experience with Hyundai I can vouch that its comparable to that if not better than it.

After good things, some very good things now. I took my Linea to first long route ride to my native place in Himachal Pradesh. In total I drove for 1250 Kms out of which 800 Kms were perfect national highways and rest of it were mix of country roads which were a mixture of bad "pakka" roads, very bad "pakka" roads and very bad "kaccha" roads. Each time my car scrapped its bottom there my heart skip a beat or two. 12 was the number of times it scrapped against the road for the complete trip which itself is a very good number seeing the condition of the roads. Immediately after the trip I brought my car for its first service at 3000 Kms. Was very very happy to see that there were only 5 scratches on the body of the shield that covers the bottom and that too very ordinary and none on the body of it. Needless to say it gave me lot of confidence to take it to such regions again. Was also happy to note that workshop guys, Varun was already confident about this part even after learning the terrain which my car had traversed in the trip. First service went very smooth. Absolutely no issues in the service provided there. As of now I have completed around 3500 Kms and its going all fine. Mileage that I am getting on my home-office-home route varies between 15.7 to 16.6 which is good for me. Even though 30% of my trip was very rough I did not face any niggling issues of falling chrome, handles, erratic noises etc. Now I can say for sure that I am also enjoying my Linea experience to the hilt. And hopefully I should be able to continue doing it in future as well.

[lalitk25]

You seems to be a very happy and relieved customer good to hear finally your ordeal ended and now you are enjoying the multijet.. keep churning those miles and you would really love to see how sweetly you are turing your daily routine driving into your sweet memories....... A pic r 2 would do justice to your comments on cars bottom......... enjoy your every journey and daily office route .....

[anup_sh]

Thanks Lalit. Yes now I am enjoying my ride. As suggested by you I am attaching a couple of pics that I took from my mobile phone after I got my car lifted to check on the scratches on the body or shield. Not very clear though because my car just came back after that long and rough trip with lot of mud stains. Still two prominent scratches would be visible. I checked thoroughly to see any impact on the body of the car but found none. There are couple of observations too from my that trip. One was about mountain driving on Linea. As soon as I hit the mountains the first impressions that I got was that car is too heavy and sluggish for mountain driving. But that was wrong. I had always driven a petrol vehicle and that too Santro on which I need not changed the gears to smaller ones even going upwards until its a very steep one. However in Linea I need to maintain a rpm of around 2000 and post that it zooms on any kind of steep surfaces. Once that understood my rest of the drive was a breeze. Second observation is about fifth gear and and impact it has on mileage. In city driving I have observed a difference of more than 1 Km/l by engaging more in fifth gear. Results are very quick on doing this and mileage comes to around 17 which normally hovers in the range of 15-16 for me.

[Seagull76]

My Linea has done 4500km ,and the issues i am facing are :

1. Left Rear Door not opening smoothly/properly from outside. Had this issue from the first week ( I didn't do the PDI properly ) and got fixed it from the dealer. It resurfaced again and informed service adviser about this during first free service. The Door Lock was changed ( as per the bill ) ,now it has resurfaced again :(,

2. During a trip to Chennai,suddenly the horn stopped working. After sometime it started working again. Informed this issue to the SA during the free service . As per the report horn works properly. This issue has resurfaced after the free service ,complained it to the dealer but no solution for this from the dealer

3. For the past one week, some rattling sound is coming during the normal speed 30-40Km/h ( near the Left Front Door ). Any idea what will be the reason for this ?

[samyakmodi]

@seagull76

your first problem, i.e. the rear left door not opening smoothly/properly has been reported to FIAT number of times. This problem later on develops in the door not opening at all!

Surprisingly this problem has always come with the left rear door. and I don't know whether you will find solace in this, but even the punto has this problem with the left rear door.

This problem I have seen in all the Lineas and Puntos I have sold via my auto-consultancy, and it looks like FIAT still hasn't done anything about it - yet!

[binaiks]

Originally Posted by samyakmodi

Surprisingly this problem has always come with the left rear door. and I don't know whether you will find solace in this, but even the punto has this problem with the left rear door.

May be my car is different.. the lock of the rear right door has been replaced, not once, but twice! Rear Left too has been replaced, but only once!

The Rear right door had jammed up, but it opened later.. never to close again. Had to run around with the door tied up, and wait for over a week for the part to arrive.

The front right door (Driver door) too had a lock dysfunction - thankfully, I noticed it before things got worse.

Till date, have replaced locks of all doors except the front left door :(

Repeated complaints to Fiat had no response from them. I called up their customer care to lodge a complaint, mailed FIAT many times and got just the standard reply "the issue is being looked into".. I am terribly disappointed at this.

[An1]

Just got my Linea this 15th August.

Been a pleasure to drive and no issues at all. The beauty got its share of rough Delhi roads 4 times already..

My wife felt the left rear door being a little too hard to open as compared to other doors, but did not notice it being a new car and maybe it would be a one off issue which may get rectified by frequent operation.

However reading the peculiar problem here, I will check the door operation again now to see if it is generic in all new Lineas too.

[neotraveller]

I dunno what is so peculiar about this Left-rear door ... but my folks have this problem too. My mom always tries and says its not opening from outside.
A couple of times I got down and went around and it opens with a little strong pull.

[luky_13]

Well i have a long list of issues that i faced with my 18 month old Linea, which has clocked about 45K Kms.
1. Rear quarter glass, chrome strip fell off - rectified
2. Parking light, button broke - panel changed
3. Carpet under the glove box, fell off - fixed
4. ABS failure, while driving down from Ooty (hair pin bends) - fixed, abs cable was loose
5. One of the horns not working intermittently - fixed
6. Hairline crack in Intercooler pipe, lead to check engine light - replaced
7. Strut pads, squeaking - replaced
8. Clutch slave cylinder - replaced under recall
9. Handle chrome strip came off - fixed with stronger adhesive

Having listed the issues i have had, i would acknowledge each time Concorde Motors Dairy circle have picked up my car from my office fixed the issue (at no cost of course) and returned the car the same day, washed and squeaky clean.
I drive 80 kms on an average daily and i really enjoy the drive in my Linea. My world upwards of 2000 rpm changes!

[An1]

Yesterday I noticed, the interior REAR roof light of my Linea stopped working. Normally it comes on when I switch off the engine and take out the key.. But now it just would not switch on, by even manual operation.

Will get it checked on the 1st service..

Has any of you had this problem too? I'm more miffed as it's just been 20 days since I bought her.

[avishar]

@luky 13 ABS failure on a new car,that is indeed scary.How did you realise that the ABS had failed?Is there a check light of sorts or our wheels locked up during hard braking?