[Utopian]

Congrats for the Figo. It is almost a rarity on our roads. Black roof gives it a mean, sporty look.
I always think Figo from the OEM point of view. Product manager has done a fine job (rear design is a bit questionable), pricing is spot on-Total Cost of ownership is also good, after sales support is decent. S&M function may be needs to work more.

[shourya_lahiri]

Congrats on your figo! Although my question might seem repeated, still all i wanted to know was from a first hand user, the results from this size of wheels. The 195/55 r 15. Yes the door sill says tbis one is one of the two wheel sizes, agreed. But i have also come to know that the figo for foreign markets have a different suspension set up also. Can anyone throw some light on this aspect? Nevertheless although the extra tyre width negates the reason to ask about grip levels, i wanted to ask you, how is your car holdinv up against rough road patches . Needless to say, i am also looking fwd to a wheel upgrade. And your responses will surely help me a lot. Will be grateful. Thanks.

[bhuvan_prasad]

Originally Posted by shourya_lahiri

Congrats on your figo! Although my question might seem repeated, still all i wanted to know was from a first hand user, the results from this size of wheels. The 195/55 r 15. Yes the door sill says tbis one is one of the two wheel sizes, agreed. But i have also come to know that the figo for foreign markets have a different suspension set up also. Can anyone throw some light on this aspect? Nevertheless although the extra tyre width negates the reason to ask about grip levels, i wanted to ask you, how is your car holdinv up against rough road patches . Needless to say, i am also looking fwd to a wheel upgrade. And your responses will surely help me a lot. Will be grateful. Thanks.

I would really recommend a tyre upgrade to 195/55 r15, just don't get a unidirectional tyre like the Yokohama s-drives, get a soft-compound all round tyre like the mc5 . steering feel improves vastly and the car just feels so planted. Ride suffers maybe like 5%, you will not notice it also, especially if you are upgrading from the OEM mrf's .

[shourya_lahiri]

Thanks a lot ! I never actually disliked the 'ride'. Although I know folks who swear by the floating ride on few cars. To be frank, if u want a handler, you will have a stiff car. So I am prepared to loose out a bit more on the 'ride' department. Just one more thing though, any suggestions on the alloy brand?

[vdm295]

Congrats Bhuvan on your new acquisition. The car just look stunning with those HRS alloys & the black roof.
So is there any plan to upgrade the audio system & the head unit?

[bhuvan_prasad]

Originally Posted by shourya_lahiri

Thanks a lot ! I never actually disliked the 'ride'. Although I know folks who swear by the floating ride on few cars. To be frank, if u want a handler, you will have a stiff car. So I am prepared to loose out a bit more on the 'ride' department. Just one more thing though, any suggestions on the alloy brand?

Trust me, the car with the 15" tyres is not even close to being stiff and the ride is very nice. Stick to the reputed brands is all I'd say for alloys, and you really cannot go wrong. You can easily look at the range online these days, a far cry form the earlier days of just being able to buy what your local store had.

Originally Posted by vdm295

Congrats Bhuvan on your new acquisition. The car just look stunning with those HRS alloys & the black roof.
So is there any plan to upgrade the audio system & the head unit?

Thank you. No plans to upgrade the audio, I like high end audio and have a comprehensive setup at home, but not in any of my cars, as it adds to the weight(performance >> audio quality). If the audio was really bad I would have put in a 4 channel amp with components, but it is OK, so I'm fine with it.

[swapnil.awate]

Originally Posted by bhuvan_prasad

As mentioned in my opening post I get around 17km/l in the city and 18-19km/l on the highway.

Fuel efficiency is never on my mind when I drive this figo, as I come from petrols and whatever I do, this car is way cheaper to run than any petrol car of ours.

Funnily I find no particular issue with the wind noise, never noticed it to be honest, and I've touched fairly high speeds on the expressways. Xm2 is a good tyre with very low road noise compared to the OEM one, maybe your point of reference for road noise is a German car ?

I got it Bhuvan. I realised that its The Mumbai-Pune Expressway causing a lot of noise and not the car. Its not made up of asphalt but of concrete, infamous for creating more noises and waving motion.

[Dr.Naren]

Bhuvan, any updates regarding remap?

[d3mon]

Originally Posted by bhuvan_prasad

A remap is on the cards. Would not want to do much more as this car is my fall-back, runabout as my other car is heavily modded.

Did the remap work out for you?

[bhuvan_prasad]

Originally Posted by Dr.Naren

Bhuvan, any updates regarding remap?

Originally Posted by d3mon

Did the remap work out for you?

Hey, the remap has still not happened. The required hardware has come from the U.K, but we can do it only over the weekend, as I'm usually quite busy during the week, and we also need to fix a slot when Quantum Tuning and Alientech are on call as well, hence it has not happened. Nonetheless, I plan to get it done by the end of this month.

In other news, the car completed 10k Kms, and I completed the second service. The car has run close to around 12k Kms, and am getting close to 19km/l now.

I got 55$ MIC Tuning 6000K H4 headlamp LED lights from the US, a friend carried them down. They had very good reviews on Amazon, so I thought, no harm in trying them out for 3.5k.
I am very happy with them. I installed them on my own, quite simple, would recommend two longish zipties to help install. It comes with fans, which are not audible unless the engine is off. I had blue pilot lamps lying around from the civics HID kit, so popped them in here, and it matches well. The amount of light it throws out is much more that stock, the throw is also longer and the colour looks really nice. Scattering is barely there, nobody has flashed me when I drive with my low beam on at night. I do not use high beam in the city. Enough talk, I shall let the pictures below do the rest of the talking. Hope this keeps you all occupied till the remap.


The Package


Looks quite nice




Low Beam


High Beam


Low Beam - LED vs Halogen


High Beam - LED vs Halogen

[Dr.Naren]

Originally Posted by bhuvan_prasad

Hey, the remap has still not happened. The required hardware has come from the U.K, but we can do it only over the weekend, as I'm usually quite busy during the week, and we also need to fix a slot when Quantum Tuning and Alientech are on call as well, hence it has not happened. Nonetheless, I plan to get it done by the end of this month.

Yes, Alientech in Italy would be open at only fixed timing and they are closed on weekends . I hope the new EDC17 Adapter works out for your ECU. I am eagerly waiting for this remap. I had dragged my remapped S cross with a stock Figo and boy the car is FAST. I want to know what a remapped Figo would do

[bhuvan_prasad]

Originally Posted by Dr.Naren

Yes, Alientech in Italy would be open at only fixed timing and they are closed on weekends . I hope the new EDC17 Adapter works out for your ECU. I am eagerly waiting for this remap. I had dragged my remapped S cross with a stock Figo and boy the car is FAST. I want to know what a remapped Figo would do

Hey, so we had a go with the new adapter, and still no success. We are just unable to read the ECU via OBD or bench. We(Akshay of GT Tunerz) were on call with Qauntum Tuning of UK, and whatever they suggested we had anyway tried, and did not work. We did not want to force read the ECU using random protocols, so tried only the relevant ones.

So, as of now the car is still on the stock map, which is not a bad thing. Akshay is going to Quantum in May, so he will take my ECU along, and we will see what the guys out there can do.

The adapter:


The ECU. The chip makes are as expected. But the Tuning Protection V12 just does not allow a read via OBD or bench.


The ECU. The made in mexico ones get read easily, the made in India ones are a pain to remap.

[Dr.Naren]

Originally Posted by bhuvan_prasad

Hey, so we had a go with the new adapter, and still no success. We are just unable to read the ECU via OBD or bench. We(Akshay of GT Tunerz) were on call with Qauntum Tuning of UK, and whatever they suggested we had anyway tried, and did not work. We did not want to force read the ECU using random protocols, so tried only the relevant ones.

Thanks for the update. Indian made ECU is the culprit, I believe. Alientech Italy would need the physical access of ECU to crack protocol. Also it's good that you did not try to force read the ECU using different protocols. I had similar experience in S-Cross with TOT. But they did force read my ECU and it always had checksum error. Doing more research into it, I have read that force reading the ECU might result in incomplete read (say few maps missed etc).

[bhuvan_prasad]

Hey Folks.

A couple of updates.

Car has completed a year and 2 months, and has run close to 15,000Km. Running well, and other than the creaky door plastics, rubbery gearshift I find nothing to complain about.

Since reading the ECU failed even with the EDC17 adapter, Akshay of GT Tunerz, asked me if I was okay if he took the ECU with him to the UK in May. He very graciously offered me his Combi VRs as a loaner during this 10 day period, and I jumped at the opportunity.

Once in the UK at the Quantum Tuning HQ, they tried reading it, and it did not yield. The next option was to have the tool manufacturers like Alientech, CMD(Flashtec) have a look at it and figure out how to read it. Since Alientech of Italy isn't the most responsive when it comes to Turnaround Time, the ECU was sent to CMD in Switzerland. They spent a day or two and were finally able to read it.

Given that there still is no protocol, the map to be put onto the ECU, will have to be conservative, as any change would mean the ECU going to CMD, till they develop the protocol. Quantum spent around 4.5 hours going through my original map and tuning the remap. Apparently the reason why the figo is 100ps and the ford 1.5 TDCi abroad is 95ps, is due to one different value in the fuel pressure table. A conservative 120ps/26kgm map was sent back to CMD. They flashed that and sent the ECU back to Quantum UK, who used servicol to seal it. Akshay then got it back to India, and the car fired up with no issues/check lights etc.

Driving Impressions - The car definitely feels sprightlier, the difference is not massive, but noticeable, especially in the higher gears. Trying to achieve a 30%+ power gain without upgrading components like your intercooler, turbo, injector may cause issues, and I didn't want such an extreme map. Flooring it in first, results in quite a bit of wheel hop, which was absent earlier, so one has to be careful now. The most difference I felt was in 4th between 80-120Km/h. Am doing a Jaipur trip this weekend, so will give a detailed update on the highway behavior plus fuel efficiency.

I have timed the 0-100 using my Gtech Pro, and the result is below:


There is a gain of 0.4 seconds. However keep in mind:
1.) Ambient temp was higher by 20C (36C versus 16C during my December stock run)
2.) A slight uphill gradient
3.) Lot of dust on Gurgaon roads
If the conditions were identical the gain would have been around 0.8s is my gut feeling.

Torque pro app, showed that the max boost pressure has remained same, around 23 Psi. A good thing, as the internals are not being stressed, extra power I believe is more because of better fueling and rail pressure changes. There is ZERO black smoke even on flooring it.

See the red arrow which denotes max boost.


The car has become that much more fun to drive, and once the protocol is officially released by CMD, we can make a few more tweaks to the car. Till then, it is nice to know that this is the only remapped Figo/Aspire in the country and that any other sub 10Lakh car will not be able to keep up with this.

[Dr.Naren]

Congrats on the remap. I am sure this is the first Figo diesel to be remapped in India. This is one of the biggest advantage of going with tuners like Quantum UK who work with many tool manufacturers. They have good support and perfect tunes. I am sure CMD would release the protocol soon and any tuner in India can remap Figo if they have the tool. Thanks to Akshay, Quantum UK and for your courage to send the ECU for R & D.

Also, I think you can go little higher after the protocol is stabilised