[milu2fast]

Thank you buddychat and Nithin. I also feel the OEM setup is expensive but best option. Will get it when I get enough vitamin M. Lately seeing a lot more snowmen around. Will keep updating.

[milu2fast]

If you give gas while in neutral (idle) rpm cuts off at 2500rpm. Is it fixed? I haven't heard about anything like this. For everyone who has passed 7500km, is there a noticeable difference in performance post 1st service?

[milu2fast]

sorry for not keeping this post updated. Let's just say I have been busy with the yeti. So what happened during this time, well a few high speed highway runs, a kodaikanal trip and a jungle trek.
About the highway runs, the yeti just leaves you in awe, I can't tell you the speeds I did but let's just say I averaged near 100kmph for 150-200kms. Braking is better, may it's me learning or the brakes have more feel now. The beauty is you can go through space like a hatchback and take the sudden bumps and occasionally being thrown out of road and just feel you were on smooth tarmac all the way. What I missed, better lights and wish I didn't have to go all the way to 1st gear every time I went over a bump. Yeti is not really an urban car, you will need too many gear shifts for a diesel car.
Kodai trip taught us that you need a bit of permutations with different formation to get the best boot space management, a contrast to our beloved Qualis. But yeti did take in 3 medium size suitcase and 4 travel bags. Ghat roads are home but it's pretty difficult to keep her from going like a gokart, bloody fast on the climb. 5 people on a total 800km trip with no complaints. We had our fair share of no roads but yeti just loves to get dirty.
I had an off road hike like drive into a jungle but I wouldn't call it off road, we didn't take a 2wd bolero there because it had a fair share of slippery slush like bits. It was so easy I didn't even have to engage offroad mode. But I learned a few tricks to overcome the low gc (compared to the usual travel modes on this particular route ) ,it was elephant territory and we had to stop often to move away trees (about 30cm diameter ) to continue on. The yeti impressed my cousin who owns the bolero and a few others with its composure and they had no words when I turned her around on that road that's barely wide enough for a yeti plus bike together. All gave a thumps up and realised this is no soft roader.
On the highway she was really composed and the combination of high speed highway pace plus ability to take all that Indian road + off road with ease puts yeti in a league of its own.
As always ready for your comments and please forgive me for the lack of pictures because I am not really into it nor find it close to fun of driving. Haven't taken yeti pictures in any of these trips. Will put in more if I recollect anything I missed.

[milu2fast]

Has anybody noticed a sound that mimics a rattle but invariably comes when you are jolted around in your seat?? And is it normal for the stock tyre to make noise in corners at speeds of about (hmmmm you guys know how much na)?? My liva has eagle f1 and they are absolutely silent at same speeds. And I have so much variation in the MID and actual efficiency figures always, each trip shows nearly 15-16 and average 13-14 but by full tank method I have never crossed 13 till now.

[milu2fast]

How efficient is the yeti on a downhill, about 5km, no acceleration???

[milu2fast]

Long awaited update on the way but a sneak peak, how much is the range of a filled up snowman???

[milu2fast]

Update : yeti crossed 10k without any glitch. I guess a small rattle from the driver door is the only issue, I can't be sure because I have deposited a comb behind the dashboard accidentally so can't be sure if that is the reason which will be rectified in the 15k service.
Travels have been to Thekkady Kodaikanal Trivandrum and a few high speed night runs. Absolutely mind blowing this one is, I respect this machine so much now. I guess I can say I have got the hang of driving this because I am faster and more efficient at the same time. As mentioned in the yeti review forum, using the technique to drive in a gear without any pedal inputs is relaxing to both the human and the machine, gives very much improved city efficiency. Thanks to all the speed limits I have had a drastic reduction in the usage of the 6th cog as I feel it struggles at speeds below 80-90kmph but that indirectly means I get more power at hand and response from the machine. Efficiency is a mixed bag if you drive this way, it becomes so much dependent on the flex of your right foot. In a weird incident in a traffic signal involving a zigzagging swift I found that the orvm are really strong and that the anti glare is absent for the left orvm and not that it was damaged by the incident 😁
On the travels, well we had everything in them, rough roads, no roads, twisting one's, heavy traffic, narrow roads and each new opportunity just gives the yeti another chance to blow your mind, I simply can't fault this car if you know how to drive it. My friend bought an A4 and I would strongly recommend a comparison with those class of vehicles for anyone who finds yeti overpriced, for Christ sake how much of a premium can you charge for a brand, I sincerely mean no offense to the owners of any premium cars. But I have to say electric seats sunroof and dsg do make you wish really that you had the L&K yeti in India.
Noteworthy points are the usual composure that you get when you are thrown out of the road at 3 digit speeds by the extremely 😡friendly buses or trucks among the oncoming traffic. Efficiency which has jumped from 11.75-12 to 13.5-14kmpl. The brilliant dynamic + size package for the cities. In a weird way to the way yeti can be kept as ready as a cheetah ready to sprint when under strict speed limits in 5th cog. Brilliant range of steering and seat adjustments in both rows, be it for luggage or my mom who prefers to make the driver seat even higher than what we get in our Qualis. Ghat road dynamics especially when roads are, well let's say deficient in that all important black coating 😜 backed of course by the grip which leaves cars above 60L wondering how we maintain such grace and precision. The lugging capacity ( no pedal inputs) of the initial 3 cogs even when you feel the gradient is a bit too much.
Overall experience, nothing short of astounding and as I always say, how many more tricks do you have Mr Snowman???
Ps: please forgive the usual lack of pictures

[milu2fast]

long due update, firstly I want to warn you that there are no pictures as I have not done anything in that aspect of my snowman.So this thread will cover the first service, a miracle moment,an absolute high speed blast and the usual stuff.

The scenario changed at my home as my qualis had an accident from my mom (she as well as the car are fine now) and so the yeti was put in front line duty, which means the usual shopping runs, office runs, runs to our estate in monsoon ( I didn't risk doing off roading as the roads there were so bad that even trucks stayed away from them,slush was at least 2 feet deep) and the snowman delivered a perfect performance. Its so easy to find space in city and close gaps, and I have learned the no input method (just slot it in a gear and the snowman moves ahead without any input from the accelerator) for the better health of my left foot. Unless you know the snowman you just can't comprehend how useful all the hooks and similar things help you to keep all those sliding bags in place, even eggs. And I don't stall so often now. So all this resulted in the yeti getting to 15K in no time and for service.

Service experience was absolutely awesome, I rate it better than toyota right now, hope I haven't jumped the gun. I told them about the comb issue and they said they might need to remove the whole dash and will take 2-3 days and the only other issue was the small rattle from the doors (The usual rubber beading oiling resolved it) anyways they did it in a day and the snowman runs as good as ever since.The extended warranty was taken and they told me that it can only be done if I take 'BAJAJ-SKODA' insurance which is 15k dearer than plain BAJAJ ( don't know if I have been made a donkey) and around 20K for the extended warranty, so paid it and I am secure for another 3years.Service was prompt and I had a chat with an executive,I told him that this is our first Czech(German) car and coming from Toyota do I need to be concerned about anything,he just said follow the service, keep wheels aligned and enjoy the ride. (off the record he told me yeti is by far the best skoda vehicle and asked me if I had hit the 2ton mark yet, now you know why the service is awesome). The efficiency has increased by about a km/l and I get 14.5+ even on city now.Rs8500 for the service but the chat, PRICELESS.

Now the miracle moment, I was in a hurry once and in village roads, roads usually people do in 50-60-kmph, well i was at double that.I entered a straight section at those speeds saw a small hump, didn't bother to slow down,what I didn't see was ahead of it there were 2 more and in between that a 20m section of no roads and a 'chowpath' (the thing used to make water flow across the road, I frankly don't know what you call that in English). So I remember we went air borne post the 'chowpath' which was after the no road section and landed back after the next hump, all this took less than a second. Now firstly AMEN, I don't know if it was God or just the snowman or both, we landed like nothing ever happened, came to a halt after and realized what just happened, for the life of me I can vouch on me that if it were any other vehicle I have driven till now in place of the snowman I am sure the story would have been totally different. From then on its official MY FAVORITE VEHICLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS YETI !!!, no more dreaming about sports cars and crazy suvs, this is the present, this is reality and I am driving the vehicle I love the most.

But that incident got me thinking, isn't the snowman too keen to be airborne?? I have been watching and testing this space closely and even on those uneven elevations on those flyovers, the snowman does seem keen to jump, has anyone felt the same??. Anyway my Tyre pressure was 35psi as I do a lot of bad roads, dropped it to 32 and it feels a lot better, will update on this space as and when I get results. A friend of mine drove the snowman for the first time and he is a driver par excellence and he also told me he felt the jumping tendency, I think its because of the long suspension travel as its a small off-roader anyway.

Save the best for the last, so we went on a trip to pondy last weekend for a marriage, I hope everyone knows how good those roads are and well we kept good speeds for long periods and its only now that my parents know how powerful the snowman is, I still got 12+ efficiency with 3 people and full luggage. And I had the reassurance from all the safety net which came into use when suddenly some moron thought he made the traffic rules and when suddenly there were sections with no tarmac.The 4x4 system just blows you away with the grip levels it offers when suddenly thrown into gravel at these speeds. On the return leg I had a few issues with aquaplaning , I have no idea why they put these useless tyres, I sometimes think I need to manually scrap it off at night and make Dad get me a replacement set in the morning. And I was pleasantly surprised to see so many yetis in Tamil Nadu, (RESPECT) guys.

I know this was really long post and as always please scrutinize as often and as much as possible.Abiding by the rule of not to disclose the speeds and as always,How many more tricks do you have Mr Snowman????

Mod Note: Post Edited. Smiley usage is restricted to two per post on Team-BHP. Please do NOT use more than 2 smileys in a post.

[Steeroid]

Originally Posted by milu2fast

On the return leg I had a few issues with aquaplaning , I have no idea why they put these useless tyres

Be careful during the monsoons, the Yeti likes to aquaplane irrespective of the tyres. I had a couple of scary moments and now make it a point to slow down if water has collected (i.e., stagnant water) on the road.

Yes I've jumped my Yeti too - on a trip to Chennai, we were clipping from Dindigul to Trichy and all of a sudden the 4-lane highway came to an abrupt end just before Tricky without any warning signs. Hit some bouncy patches at speeds that are not mentionable on this forum, but the Yeti stayed its course and we gradually came to a complete halt to take a deep breath and wonder what the hell just happened - this was at night and there was no way you could make out that the road surface or width is changing.

Bigfoot can take some serious beating and come out unscathed.

[milu2fast]

Thanks steerooid, so you know exactly what I meant. And yes I can vouch for the ability of the snowman to take a beating and continue unaffected. I was scared out of my pants with mine, can't imagine yours at highway speeds at night. Thanks to god and your snowman.

[milu2fast]

Firstly Happy new year to all and apologies for the long delay in updating the thread.
In brief I am to talk about an overly enthusiastic drunken indica driver who tried re modelling the snowman,a perfect outing and countless hours in highway.
So one afternoon my parents went to town in the snowman, mom had exited the car and dad parked it on the side and just as he engaged the handbrake-thud, mom said the sound was too loud they though "luxury thoybaa " started working in Kerala. Anyway a drunker Indica driver had bumped into our rear at 1345hrs on a weekday just meters from the bus stand and he had such an impact that the snowman moved forward and damaged the rear bumper of an Alto that was parked just ahead of us. The damage was catastrophic for the Indica as in it had the front wheel hub broken and Tyre flying, similarly the alto lost its rear bumper. Surprisingly the Snowman had a small hole in the plastic region of the rear bumper as it hit a metal ring situated behind the bumper and hence made a punched out hole and the front impact destroyed the glass covering of the left front headlamp and a dent near that.Obviously we were angry and sad and argument started and finally got the Indica guy to cough up 10k and also made him pay the poor Alto guy for his lost rear bumper, but I just can't comprehend he can just walk off from the police station as they said since there was no injuries to any person the law is not strong enough to punish these kinda of creeps as of now. I think max punishment is he can plead guilty for being rash and negligent in the court and be off with a 3k fine and also bother everyone involved by making them have frequent visits to the court. Anyway the estimate was around 70k as we needed a new rear bumper, left front headlamp and patchwork on the dent.Anyway the service guys were satisfactory as they said the only issue was the delay in parts arriving and the rear bumper took a good 18-20days to arrive and hence as a result the snowman was missed for almost a month.The work done was good, I just had an issue with the misaligned beam of the replaced headlamp and that was promptly corrected in a brief visit to the showroom.Overall happy with Skoda as we were well informed of the work and they were happy to correct anything that left us desiring for more.
A few days ago I had a phone interview from Skoda , call came from Mumbai I guess, they ask you to rate their service on various aspects and the questions range from how did you get to buying a Skoda? to How would you rate the service in terms of explaining work done and test drive done by the service engineer to was there a pick and drop facility arranged? Anyway I guess it cements the fact that Skoda are serious on getting their act together and I can vouch for it that yes, there really is a positive vibe about things around.Anyway we claimed insurance and hence lost our No-Claim bonus and well I kinda like to believe that something big was to happen and we ended up just having a few replaced parts and a month missing the snowman dearly.
Now I really would like to thank my heart out to Ajay ( proud owner of our 'Benchmark' snowman from Calicut ) because I just thought of bugging him for the left front headlamp as his OEMs , in case I didn't claim the insurance,were lying around unused in his house. He was in Dubai doing dune bashing when I called him but he replied promptly and was really too kind but as I claimed the insurance I couldn't use his lamp but Thanks again to you mate, and now I guess my family agrees, we T-BHPians are a brotherhood be it we are crazy ,often too much,autoholics

I guess I don't have the pictures of the incident and I am pretty much running out of time now so will post about the rest very soon.As Always welcome any kinda of scrutiny.Happy driving guys

[milu2fast]

Again apologies for the delay, this will be a follow up on the last post. Anyway the snowman just crossed 26k and running better than ever and now more into relaxed high efficiency mile munching on pretty good roads.

Perfect outing: we had a trip to valparai and that just brought out the Snowman in every way. Was very happy mile munching in triple and double digit speeds on the way and behaved absolutely similarly when the roads were bad too. I have learned it the hard way but Yeti can traverse horrible sections , I mean really horrible, in well over triple digit speeds. Its something I can't associate with cars even trice as expensive and sedans owners ( please don't try, no offense intended). And once we reached there was happy pottering in narrow roads and occasionally taking the pavement and ditches in order to allow two way traffic. On the day break we got into a plantation road which (2wd) boleros and jeeps do regularly but get stuck if it gets wet (4wd won't break a sweat) and yeti just went about its business and surprised many workers on the way as they had never seen something that looks like this on those sections. At the wheel was a friend of mine who had no experience in anything outside tar roads and to overcome the stalling issue he fried the clutch withing 100mts. It was a incline but if he had known that clutch shouldn't be used off road I don't think yeti would have broken a sweat and on the return I took the wheel and things were calm. Its tricky without a low ratio as the crawl speed is a bit too much and its a matter of experience to get the yeti moving on an incline without burning the clutch ( not boasting, another lesson learned the hard way)
Anyway I kinda felt like the Snowman thanked me for taking him there as I could just feel he was ecstatic (talking to a car) Rest of the journey was without drama except for my friend testing the snowman's handling on roads between Chalakudy and Athirampilly in unmentionable speeds. Anyway the best outing for the Snowman to date and this time finally I have pictures to back it up.
Rest of the boring stuff in a post soon. As always welcome and expect scrutiny and questions

[milu2fast]

Warning: this will be a series of updates.
A long long overdue update, sorry for the delay guys. A lot has happened in 7 years and most importantly the Snowman is still incredible.
Firstly life has changed for me from being a bachelor car newbie ( road rage, speeds, time limits, and a bit of taunting) to a boring family man ( hypermilier, babying the cars and judicious preventive maintenance). If there was an option to change my name , it would be milu2fast to milu2 rarely everfast😂.
About the Snowman, well we are almost at 95000kms and going ever so strong. I would like to believe the machine and me have bonded over time. I think from about 45000 kms it's almost being exclusively driven by me except for may be 1000kms.
So after that trip the snowman was assigned to just two jobs - my Muvattupuzha Palakkad night runs and Mom daily runs ( big mistake). First update: things were going fine untill the stock tyres started making the snowman a potent ski monster during the rains. I still remember one night drive on the 4 lane stretch were i was struggling to keep 50kmph . All the electronic aids made it seem like Christmas in the instrument cluster but I could see even fully loaded trucks fly past me with ease. It was decided then and there that we needed to change tyres ASAP. So I started researching in the Yeti tyre thread and finally ended up with the rarest tyre. Apollo Acceleremax 225/60. These were sportier tyres from the get go. Nice looking, cheaper than foreign brands and I put them to very very good use .
About the same time i received a call one day from Mom saying the car lost all power, huh? And i was thinking which button in the car can cause that? Anyway let me put her exact words translated to English - " I started the vehicle, put it in gear, released the clutch but it doesn't move nor get bogged down" . Long story short she along with my incredibly stupid off-road mistakes had successfully burnt the clutch in an incredible 38000kms ( clap clap). As we were in Palakkad and heard exceptionally good things about SGA Skoda coimbatore called in the flat bed and towed the Snowman to the service centre. Surprise surprise we were asked to pay for clutch plus flywheel even though we were within the original warranty owing to wear and tear explaination. We being first time premium car users thought this was part of the experience plus feeling guilty of the abuse we had put on the vehicle decided not to argue. ( May be i missed the snowman too much) The car was a dream post the clutch replacement and things were all good. Nobody dared drive the snowman except me owing to fear of another clutch replacement, let's just say I played my part in it that decesion too

Thank you if you are still on this thread after this huge gap. Will try to be more regular with updates and get everyone upto speed.
Attaching the only Picture I have right now( in Google photos) from the time period. If current status is what you are looking for, i have recently posted in the official Yeti thread.