[shankar.balan]

Yes, this is true. I know from personal experience that the M&M team listens to consumers and tries to look after their needs. They are definitely a company with solid ethics and I like them a lot for that.

Whatever said and done, they have made the world sit up and listen, with this "Game and Scale changing" XUV 500!

Its time the Koreans and Japanese learned that they should go beyond bringing their CBUs here and causing us to pay un-necessary premium prices for them.

[quote=Dr.Suraj;2732667]Teething troubles.

BUT - what is heartening is that both these firms are painstakingly responding to customers - individually. And their problems.
Not a deaf ear or complacence.
They are improving step by step.

[nilanjanray]

Where did you get the lights changed and adjusted? The Toyota folks are not too keen to tinker around with the lights. I want to get me Light Force spots adjusted and also see if it makes sense to upgrade my high and low beam bulbs.

[Behemoth]

Originally Posted by nilanjanray

Where did you get the lights changed and adjusted? The Toyota folks are not too keen to tinker around with the lights. I want to get me Light Force spots adjusted and also see if it makes sense to upgrade my high and low beam bulbs.

I did it myself!

I am a mechanically inclined guy (being an engineer) and can do quite a bit of tinkering with cars.

(It is not too difficult to do and even you can try on your own)

If you are referring to the stock lamps on your Fortuner, you can get them changed to "Premium" Halogen lamps from Philips / Osram and you will get significant increase in light level. Alternatively you can also get your main beams (ones with projector lens) upgraded to Xenon Lamps + Gear (Philips / Osram are avl for around 10.5 K for a set of lamps + gear - go for 4000 Kelvin colour temperature). These will give you around 3x the light which you were originally getting. The connectors are also snap fit and you would not need to cut any wiring - so warranty should not be affected. Best would be if you could purchase these from outside and ask the Toyota accessories guys to fit them and charge the labour fees.

Regards,
Behemoth

[fiorano88]

A big thank you to Behemoth,Shankar,pramods and sushilbajpai.. i was looking for a new car and had almost finalized on the fortuner and as is customary was going through the tbhp ownership reviews before taking the plunge when i happened to read about your ownership reviews on the yeti.a quick glance to the official review was made and now 2 weeks later i have a matto brown yeti standing in the driveway instead of the fortuner & im loving every bit of it

[Behemoth]

Originally Posted by fiorano88

A big thank you to Behemoth,Shankar,pramods and sushilbajpai.. i was looking for a new car and had almost finalized on the fortuner and as is customary was going through the tbhp ownership reviews before taking the plunge when i happened to read about your ownership reviews on the yeti.a quick glance to the official review was made and now 2 weeks later i have a matto brown yeti standing in the driveway instead of the fortuner & im loving every bit of it

Thanks Fiorano88 and congrats on your Yeti! It is a very pratical choice in today's scenario and is quite frugal and also fun to drive and compact in size! Especially for city dwellers with small families, it is a good mix of city comfort and a little bit of off road adventure.
Enjoy!

[C300]

Originally Posted by fiorano88

A big thank you to Behemoth,Shankar,pramods and sushilbajpai.. i was looking for a new car and had almost finalized on the fortuner and as is customary was going through the tbhp ownership reviews before taking the plunge when i happened to read about your ownership reviews on the yeti.a quick glance to the official review was made and now 2 weeks later i have a matto brown yeti standing in the driveway instead of the fortuner & im loving every bit of it

Congratulations fiorano88! Well, we all love this beast. Its just perfect for our cities. Do share you ownership experience with loads of pics.

[shankar.balan]

Am glad you're happy. Its true that the Yeti puts a smile on your face every time you take it out. Its 140BHP kicks in beautifully when accelerating in 2nd gear. Brilliant package and nice choice of colour. For me the Silver won over the Mato Brown on account of Bangalore's miserable traffic and potential scratches and dirt. Enjoy your Yeti!. It is just right for the city and for those once in a way highway drives as well as hill drives. To me, right now, it is absolutely the perfect vehicle for my kind of needs. Versatile, frugal in consumption, very comfortable and loaded with high quality goodies. The tactility of everything inside the Yeti is for me, a serious step up in quality, fit, finish and finesse. Its solid tank like build is very confidence inspiring as are its intelligent safety features. Feels great to own one. Trouble is that one cannot easily re-adjust to some other "less well built" vehicle!

Originally Posted by fiorano88

A big thank you to Behemoth,Shankar,pramods and sushilbajpai.. i was looking for a new car and had almost finalized on the fortuner and as is customary was going through the tbhp ownership reviews before taking the plunge when i happened to read about your ownership reviews on the yeti.a quick glance to the official review was made and now 2 weeks later i have a matto brown yeti standing in the driveway instead of the fortuner & im loving every bit of it

[vb-saan]

Originally Posted by fiorano88

A big thank you to Behemoth,Shankar,pramods and sushilbajpai.. i was looking for a new car and had almost finalized on the fortuner and as is customary was going through the tbhp ownership reviews before taking the plunge when i happened to read about your ownership reviews on the yeti.a quick glance to the official review was made and now 2 weeks later i have a matto brown yeti standing in the driveway instead of the fortuner & im loving every bit of it

Congratulations! Good choice indeed. The Yeti indeed is a great option over the Fortuner if you are not really looking for a 7-seater seater with heavy off-road capabilities. And the compact dimensions enable easy driving in our traffic conditions. And not to forget the full array of safety features. Do post an ownership review of the Mato Brown beauty.

[drchernish]

Congrats on your Yeti. What I wanted to know was that does your yeti come with isofix child car seat fixations? Recently bought a car seat for my 2month old princess and was horrified when the person from mother care told me that my verna does not have these fixtures and will have to fix the seat using cars belt. There was a diagram on the seat on how to do this. Is that safe?also can anyone put up a list of cars having isofix fixtures,will be thankful.

[vb-saan]

Originally Posted by drchernish

Congrats on your Yeti. What I wanted to know was that does your yeti come with isofix child car seat fixations? Recently bought a car seat for my 2month old princess and was horrified when the person from mother care told me that my verna does not have these fixtures and will have to fix the seat using cars belt. There was a diagram on the seat on how to do this. Is that safe?also can anyone put up a list of cars having isofix fixtures,will be thankful.

The Yeti does have Isofix mounts for the outer rear seats. Sadly most of the Asian manufacturers give this feature a miss. That said, securing child seat using the seatbelts is a common practice. Just follow the instructions provided in the manual.

Note: We have a couple of threads on child saftey. Please see below:
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian...ian-roads.html


http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/modifi...seat-kids.html

[vc_naveen]

Originally Posted by fiorano88

A big thank you to Behemoth,Shankar,pramods and sushilbajpai.. i was looking for a new car and had almost finalized on the fortuner and as is customary was going through the tbhp ownership reviews before taking the plunge when i happened to read about your ownership reviews on the yeti.a quick glance to the official review was made and now 2 weeks later i have a matto brown yeti standing in the driveway instead of the fortuner & im loving every bit of it

Congrats on your new buy. I have a fortuner, although i love the way it looks and the presence it has on the road, i hate the ride quality. It is extremely bumpy and seems to shake my bones whenever i go over a speed breaker.
Again the size is a little too big for driving on congested roads.
Alas i did not test drive the Yeti when i got the fortuner ( i wanted 6 seats) and had i gone for a test drive, I probably would have gone for the Yeti, it is much more fun to drive - Handles like a car, great low end torque, oodles of features and nice interiors.
And the Matto Brown is a beautiful color. Have Fun !

[Behemoth]

Hi All,

A quick update on our Black Behemoth.
I finally took the plunge of changing my Yeti's Tyres with Yokohama C-Drive 215/60 R16 99V tyres (got them at Rs 8730 per tyre). These tyres are extremely hard to get these days and in this size the availability is a big problem! But I can tell you that it was well worth it. What I had earlier used to think was Wind noise at 100 Km/hr, was actually tyre noise with the pathetic Goodyears. I put up with the Goodyears for more than 23K Kms, before giving in to the temptation to change them!



The noise is gone completely now and the ride has also improved drastically. There is no bubbly ride feeling and also no tramlining - both of which had started happening very frequently with the Goodyears.
One more point which I noticed when getting the tyres changed was the Goodyears (in current condition) needed almost 120-150gm of balancing weights in different places to be balance (even those which had never been punctured!) while the Yoko's did'nt need more than 40gm in any tyre - shows the consistency of manufacture and the quality of the tyres (the Yokos were made in Japan) and the Goodyears were made in Malaysia.

One handy tip that the tyre fitter shared with me when the tyres were being fitted was that new tyres are marked with a circular dot on the periphery of the tyre, which shows the lightest part of the tyre. This dot should be aligned with the inflation valve and will lead to the best balancing of the tyre with least weights. Basically this offsets partially the weight of the valve and helps reduce the weight required to balance the tyres.

I had also been evaluating on whether to put in larger 215/65 R16 tyres, but my apprehensions finally made me go for the OE size only:

1) Warranty would be affected if I put in larger tyres

2) Ride quality may also suffer and the body roll would increase and there was no way of predicting how much !

3) The larger tyre 215/65 R16 just would not fit in the spare wheel well (actually checked). Even the 215/60R16 tyre fits with great difficulty. I have changed the smaller space saver 195/60 R16 tyre to the full size as I did not want any speed limitations even with the spare tyre (which was speed restricted to 80 km/hr with the space saver tyre).

4) Since my Yeti will be used 95% in the city and on highways, I went with a road tyre only.



However, that said, the C-drives are good - they have a UTQG of 300 A A and the rating for the tyre is 99V - which means that the load they can carry per tyre is 775 Kg instead of the 690 Kg which the 95H Goodyears were. The V rating also means a higher speed rating of 240 Km/hr vs the 210 km/hr of the Goodyears.
The tyres give good ride comfort and are very silent and don't make any din as compared to the Goodyears.

The other option which I was also considering was the Michelin Primacy LC, but these are very soft tyres and for the Yeti, would not have been ideal.


With the space saver also changed to the full size 215/60 R16 tyre (one of the earlier Goodyears) the tyre does rise up a little bit out of the wheel well / compartment and takes away a little bit of the boot space. But for me, this was vital, as I did not want a speed limited spare wheel.





Apart from this, all is well and no problems / issues so far. The mileage we are getting currently is in the range of 15.5 kmpl. This is due to the unbearable 44 Degree plus heat these days in Gurgaon and also as there is no sunfilm on the windows, the AC has to run overtime and it seems to have brought down the mileage by around 5-6%.

The Silver Cheetah is also doing well (with my BIL) and has covered around 7200 kms and the initial Euphoria has died down and he prefers using his Ritz more for daily driving as it is much more convenient and fuel efficient (21kmpl on diesel). The Cheetah is used only for outstation holidays / family outings and is returning a mileage of 12.8 kmpl (summer effect here too!)

Regards,
Behemoth

[vb-saan]

Thanks Behemoth for the update. Good to know that you finally managed to find a set of tyres with the recommended spec. Is Yeti the only car in India running on this tyre spec? I am quite surprised with the lack of options.

[Behemoth]

Originally Posted by vb-san

Thanks Behemoth for the update. Good to know that you finally managed to find a set of tyres with the recommended spec. Is Yeti the only car in India running on this tyre spec? I am quite surprised with the lack of options.

Yes, there are only a few options and the problem is that all the options are car tyres and not SUV tyres! You can see the details of the options which I found on Width:215 | Profile:60 | Rim Size:16

Out of these, I considered finalizing on the Conti CPC2 or the Yoko C-Drives, as both of these are 99V rated and can take extra load (good for a heavy car like Yeti). They also have better construction quality and reinforcement compared to the 95H tyres from other manufacturers. I finally chose the Yokos as for the Continentals, I came across quite a few complaints for sidewall damage on many Indian forums. For the Yoko C-drives, I found only one complaint reported for sidewall, and that too when they were driven very aggressively. (The Yoko S-Drives however are much softer and have many complaints of sidewall damage).

The other option was to consider 215/65 R16 tyres, but due to the reasons mentioned earlier, I did not go for the higher size - this size is 3.2% bigger in OD than the OE size. Also, AT tread tyres will be quite noisy for daily use and may affect the ride comfort. If you ready to upsize, I would recommend going for Michelin Latitude Tour HP as this will give you a good balance of SUV usage and city use.

My driving is mostly city + highway driving and hopefully one trip to Leh in this year in August and I feel that the Yokos should be able to manage. Unfortunately due to the ISI norms, very few tyre options are available now and most imported tyre manufactures are left with only 10-20 key tyres in their portfolio due to each tyre size requiring individual approbation, which itself is a painful exercise for them and very time consuming.


Regards,
Behemoth

[Behemoth]

Just returned from a 600 Km round trip from Bareilly and felt a huge difference with the new Yokohama C-Drives. The grip is now very good and car feels well placed even at speeds of 150-160, which it never used to feel with the Goodyears - this level of grip / confidence was not felt even till 120, and I rarely used to exceed 120. With the Yoko's the grip gives confidence and I tested them till 160 and one can feel a huge difference. Also, the noise levels the Goodyears had at 100, the Yokos have at around 150 (Including tyre and air noise!). Comfort has also improved drastically and there is no rude bump/ thud when going over small imperfections; even the metal speedbreakers are much more comfortable going over.

Overall a very pleasant drive and it was easier to maintain a much higher speed than ever earlier - due to the better tyres and also the condition of the road which has improved drastically.
(OT: The good news is that the Railway crossing flyover between Rampur and Muradabad is now complete and the earlier traffic jams of 8-10 Kms are history now. People heading to Nainital can now reach there now in < 6 Hours flat from Gurgaon.)

Regards,
Behemoth