Re: The baby leopard - My Red Honda Brio VX Automatic Update: 20,000 km up !
So it's been a year and half and she has covered 20k kilometres. Been driving her everyday to office over all possible types of roads yet she soldiers on. As a bonus the sound of the i-Vtec when red-lined still puts a smile my face  And no problems so far. The car has developed one minor rattle- in the rear left door but it's not even discernible unless you really look out for it hence liveable with. Through heavy rains and through brutal summers, over gravelly roads and highways she just keeps on chugging !
The recent chennai floods also failed to faze her. On the night of 4th (when the water levels started rising) around 8 pm i had gone to my car parking and was shocked to see 1 feet deep water. And with news coming in about rising water levels I knew i had to do something. So for the next 2 hours, while in knee deep dirty water, I raised the car using the jack and placed bricks/wooden planks/pretty much anything i could find at that time under the wheels to raise the car. I manged to lift the car by about 10 cm and boy did those 10 cm prove to be a game changer ! Over the next 10 days while everyone else's cars had water in their exhaust pipe, the lil' Brio was safe. I used to turn on the engine everyday and revved it a bit (making sure engine RPMs were less than 2000) to keep her pistons running , even if i couldnt move her around. And due to this on 20th , after they had succeeded in draining the water from my flats I could driver her away easily !
I went to Mansarover Honda to keep a post monsoon check up but they, along with all other service centres, were swamped. Since the little leopard was working just fine i decided to give for service in Jan 2016 when the 20k service was due+ plus i hoped by then the deluge of cars at workshops would be less+ one of the service advisors gave her a quick look over to ensure all the major systems were fine and didn't need repair.
Last saturday evening i went to Mansarover Honda to give her for service. I Was shocked to see that they still had a sizeable number of cars with them. A surprising number of 4th Gen Citys were among them. Is it becuase the 4th Gen City was sold in sizeable numbers or because it, reportedly, isnt of the same high quality as the earlier generations ? I dont know. But it sure seemed suspicious.
Moving on to my 20k service. I told the service advisor that this was her first service post floods. He tried to push a few unnecessary services (ECU diagnostic testing, throttle re-setting) but I was sharp enough to tell him how they were unnecessary for a 20k well maintained (IMHO) car and he didn't persist. The only extra services I requested were- external waxing and interior cleaning as well as checking out the source of the rattle i had mentioned earlier. I was told the bill would be ~7k and that the car would be ready by Monday afternoon. Since I didn't want to skip work i decided to pick her up on Tuesday morning.
On tuesday I reached there and was given a bill of 6.1 k , which was lesser than their earlier estimate, a pleasant surprise !
As you can see almost half of the bill was for the cleaning works. And while the interior cleaning was satisfactory I feel the exterior cleaning and waxing was not up to the mark. They even left water marks on the rear glass :\ I guess getting waxing done from outside would make more sense. Won't make mistake of trusting Honda cleaning again. Other than this the servicing was fine. The engine response had improved noticeably. Guess the engine oil+air filter change (which probably got clogged on dusty Chennai roads) made all the difference. The service advisor also informed me that the left rear suspension had a very very minute leak of the suspension fluid and that would be replaced by Honda under the warranty (thank god i went for the extended 4 year warranty during purchase !). The part wasn't readily available and an order for it had been placed and it would take a few days to arrive. As i write this, the part still hasnt arrived. Since the leak is very tiny i was told that i can continue to drive the car while the part arrives. Hope that doesn't a cause problem later on !
Parting note: A mark of a good car is that she must make you grin everytime you walk up to her. And she still manages to do that ! Let's hope it stays that way 
Last edited by Rollingwheels26 : 24th January 2016 at 01:30.
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