[Shanksta]

Wishing you all a Happy New Year !

Current Odometer Reading: 17427kms

Continuing to clock kilometers like crazy, the last 8231kms have been clocked in 45 days !

2022 began on the right foot for Skylar and me. Taking opportunity of the fact that 01-Jan-2022 fell on a Saturday. I did a quick solo drive to Kanyakumari and back.



Left leisurely at 6:19am and reached my hotel in Kanyakumari around 7pm. Stopped a lot enroute as the scenery was very distracting. Had lunch at Dindigul Thalapakatti in Virudhunagar. Saw the most beautiful sky during sunset, the angry sky along the with the windmills just made the drive so satisfying.



The roads from Madurai to Kanyakumari are in top shape(freshly relaid) barring a few diversion enroute. But the toll tax collected is daylight robbery, I paid a total of 945 rupees for the 689km drive.



The next day woke up late and left Kanyakumari around 9am. All the tourist spots were closed due to new year and the increasing Omicron cases.



Made plans with friends in Madurai for lunch, landed in Amma Mess around 1:30pm and had lipsmacking non-veg food followed by a quick ice-cream stop at Ibaco. Left towards Tiruchirapalli around 3:15pm after a quick stop at the BPCL COCO for a refuel at Vellaripatti. Met another friend for a quick 'hi' at Shri Sangeethas in Trichy around 4:30pm.

Started towards Chennai amidst crazy traffic and reached home at 10:50pm. Overall a quick 1394kms round trip to Kickstart the year.



As usual the Ford continues to make me fall more in love with every passing kilometer.

[Shanksta]

UPDATE: 1 Year/20,000 kms with the BS6 EcoSport

It has been a little over a year since I bought Skylar home. By far this has been the most enjoyable year for me as far as driving and cars come into the picture.

Skylar achieved the 20,000 kms milestone in 354 days & 22 hours. This translates to an average of 56.5 kms a day, which is while I am still working from home. I am definitely adept at sneaking in those kilometres.



Got the 3rd/20k kms service done from Dhruvan Ford on 12-Mar-2022. The engine oil, air filter, oil filter and AC filter was replaced, I had opted for the express service and got the car back within the promised time of 2 hours. The total bill was ₹5650 which is very reasonable IMHO. The service experience as well was extremely good.

Attention to detail: little markers added on the driver side seat ensure correct position while returning the car.



I am still pending to have the catalytic converter replaced under recall by Ford. The service center did not have the parts in stock and I was not willing to leave my car with them for a few days. Will update once I get this done.

Apart from this, Skylar has been a fill it, shut it & forget it experience till now. *Touchwood*

Did a quick trip to Pondy in February and none in March. These have been pretty lean months running wise and will be corrected April.



The more the I drive Skylar, the more I begin to appreciate the NVH and comfort offered by the EcoSport. It is truly a wonderful travel companion. Currently the odometer reads 21036kms.



I consistently get about 800kms between each tankful. Attaching below statistics for fuel consumption and cost of running.



On one of my random early morning drives to Mahabalipuram on ECR



Cheers !

[pananth]

Great to see your posts. Ecosport is absolute hoot to drive. I am enjoying mine too! I remember we bought the cars around the same time last year!

Great posts, keep sharing!

- Ananth

[CR07]

Originally Posted by Shanksta

UPDATE: 1 Year/20,000 kms with the BS6 EcoSport

The car that continues to punch above its weight (even after the car has been discontinued )

I too have a 2018 S TDCI. It has been a fill it shut it experience for me till date. Infact I am so confident with the car, that I did not buy the extended warranty, which lapsed last year in June.

[sundarsarma]

It has been a little over a year since I bought Skylar home. By far this has been the most enjoyable year for me as far as driving and cars come into the picture.

Skylar achieved the 20,000 kms milestone in 354 days & 22 hours.

Congrats @Shanksta for your 20k+ drive. Mine is a Diesel Sports version and celebrated the anniversary just couple of weeks back with 16584 on the ODO. 65% of it had been city drives. The ODO reads 16876 now. Enjoying every bit of driving, but, for the DPF warning frequently in the last 2 months.

I am still pending to have the catalytic converter replaced under recall by Ford. The service center did not have the parts in stock and I was not willing to leave my car with them for a few days. Will update once I get this done.

Recall for Catalytic Filter replacement is in now way related to DPF issues. I have got that replaced as soon as i got the call. When checked with the SA at Ford, i understood it is just to ensure the catalytic convertor does not crack. Probably the ceramic used in the earlier one is prone to cracks and hence a better one.

I too was of the opinion that changing this will relieve us of the DPF warning. Unfortunately, that is not the case as rightly pointed by @jithin23.

After this cat converter replacement also i get the exhaust filter requires cleaning warning often. Even after driving for 200 + kms during weekends this error disappears just for couple of days and re-appears. If you are a regular city driver, this is unavoidable, that too in Chennai traffic, even on OMR.

[Shanksta]

Originally Posted by pananth

Great to see your posts. Ecosport is absolute hoot to drive. I am enjoying mine too! I remember we bought the cars around the same time last year!

Hey thank you Ananth. Indeed we both picked up our EcoSport at the same time and in fact if I remember correctly I have seen your Smoke Grey ES twice and we share the same series registration too !

Originally Posted by CR07

The car that continues to punch above its weight (even after the car has been discontinued)

Oh yes, it does. Infact I recently had an experience where a stranger walked up to me mentioning he was looking to buy an EcoSport and wanted my user feedback. Moreover he was complaining all the examples available in the market were too expensive despite Ford exiting. I was !

Originally Posted by sundarsarma

Congrats @Shanksta for your 20k+ drive. Mine is a Diesel Sports version and celebrated the anniversary just couple of weeks back with 16584 on the ODO.

Thank you sundarsharma !

I was trying to get the catalytic converter replaced as per recall code 21E13 issued by Ford for my car. However I was told by the dealership they are still awaiting parts from Ford. About a couple of weeks back I thought of checking directly with Ford India and reached out to their customer care team via their Dial a Ford toll free number.

What they told me was apparently Ford has now dropped the recall and are instead doing a software update. She said I should be receiving an official communication from Ford soon. But I found this weird and questioned them on why their dealerships are not informed about this to which I did not receive a satisfactory answer.

My guess is that Ford India has managed to replace the parts in the batches that were affected and hence silently dropped the recall. *Touchwood* and fingers crossed, hope I never face any issue.

[ron82x3]

Originally Posted by sundarsarma

After this cat converter replacement also i get the exhaust filter requires cleaning warning often. Even after driving for 200 + kms during weekends this error disappears just for couple of days and re-appears. If you are a regular city driver, this is unavoidable, that too in Chennai traffic, even on OMR.

I recently got mine replaced and got a warning message within 200kms of city driving.

This is now getting frustrating. With similar driving pattern (1.5 years and 11k on the ODO), I have never had to worry about DPF issues previously, until this recall happened.
On one occasion I had to drive for ~85kms to get the message cleared.

What do you do when such message appears? How long do you drive with the message on?

[sundarsarma]

Originally Posted by ron82x3

I recently got mine replaced and got a warning message within 200kms of city driving.

This is now getting frustrating. With similar driving pattern (1.5 years and 11k on the ODO), I have never had to worry about DPF issues previously, until this recall happened.
On one occasion I had to drive for ~85kms to get the message cleared.

What do you do when such message appears? How long do you drive with the message on?

I agree, it’s really frustrating. When the first time i got this message when the ODO was around 4300 kms, i was bit scared and then a long drive of 300 kms cleared the warning.
It was okay until 9500 kms and the warning popped up again. Another long drive and co-incidentally this catalytic converter recall was made. The long drive cleared the message and the
replacement gave me bit relief. However, @jithin23 had already cautioned me that after this DPF replacement his friend’s Ecosport started giving more headaches and his friend had gone
for re-mapping. And since then no issues.

I too sometimes get the second thoughts. However, don’t want to take risk as the vehicle is still under warranty and re-mapping would void the warranty.

In the past 3 months, the warning has popped up 3 times. For the first two times, i drove around 230 kms to clear this.

And this is the 3rd time and the warning has now graduated since it popped up last Wednesday !! Unfortunately couldn’t drive last Sunday.

Yesterday and today it’s showing “ Exhaust filter at limit. Drive to clean “ . Planning to take another long drive this Sunday.

Watch this video to get more clarity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVwBnjCZWZY&t=142s

[sundarsarma]

Originally Posted by ron82x3

What do you do when such message appears? How long do you drive with the message on?

Hi ron, this time i consciously tracked the distance driven with the messages. The warning "Exhaust filter overloaded. Drive to clean" popped up at 16886 and "Exhaust filter at limit. Drive to clean" popped at 17004. Today morning at 17228 on ODO took for a long drive and the message changed to "Exhaust filter overloaded" only at 17389 and intermittently "Exhaust filter cleaning "and this message kept popping. For the last few kms to home these had disappeared and just when entering the apartment gate, the warning "Exhaust filter overloaded" popped up again.

There's a definite drop in power and the vehicle randomly shudders, when your foot in on the pedal. Removing the foot off the pedal and allowing the vehicle cruise in it's own speed helps a bit.

Ford's claim of driving for 20 minutes continuously doesn't help at all. It might work abroad. In India, where the highways are passing through many villages, makes us slow down every couple of kms, with lots of other road users and cattles crossing the path. In spite of that I had been maintaining 80 - 100 for almost 70% of today's drive.

Does anyone have an alternate solution? Do all the Ecosport BS6 owners face this or is it just only few owners like me? Unfortunately we do not have the Ad Blue option also like other few BS6 diesel engines.

[ron82x3]

Originally Posted by sundarsarma

Hi ron, this time i consciously tracked the distance driven with the messages. The warning "Exhaust filter overloaded. Drive to clean" popped up at 16886 and "Exhaust filter at limit. Drive to clean" popped at 17004.

Thanks for your observations. That means one will have more or less 500Kms between those messages, and 200 Kms for the "Exhaust filter overloaded. Drive to clean" to pop up from fresh.
That gives a range of min 700Kms.

However, I did not notice any loss of power. The revs do climb up even at idling and the mileage also drops by 2-3Kmpl when the regen is working in the background.

I have read thet people have done away with this BS6 nuisance with a remap from trusted companies (Code 6).

[sundarsarma]

Originally Posted by Shanksta

Thank you sundarsharma !

I was trying to get the catalytic converter replaced as per recall code 21E13 issued by Ford for my car. However I was told by the dealership they are still awaiting parts from Ford. About a couple of weeks back I thought of checking directly with Ford India and reached out to their customer care team via their Dial a Ford toll free number.

What they told me was apparently Ford has now dropped the recall and are instead doing a software update. She said I should be receiving an official communication from Ford soon. But I found this weird and questioned them on why their dealerships are not informed about this to which I did not receive a satisfactory answer.

My guess is that Ford India has managed to replace the parts in the batches that were affected and hence silently dropped the recall. *Touchwood* and fingers crossed, hope I never face any issue.

Hi Shanksta, Did you get a recall after this ? I got the second recall in the month of January and got it replaced again at 31500 kms. First one was around 15000 kms.

Attaching the pictures of what was changed

[Shanksta]

Originally Posted by sundarsarma

Hi Shanksta, Did you get a recall after this ? I got the second recall in the month of January and got it replaced again at 31500 kms. First one was around 15000 kms.

Attaching the pictures of what was changed

Hi sundarsarma,

No I did not get any further recalls although I did visit the service center once to get the DPF cleaned and for a software update.

[Shanksta]

Final Update - Skylar Sold !

Odometer Reading : 35470.4 kms at the time of sale.

As mentioned in my other ownership review, in Aug 2022 I bought a sedan for myself while handing over the EcoSport to my parents for their use. By end 2022 we realised that the usage was really less not justifying holding onto a diesel workhorse like the EcoSport. Adding to this was the recurring DPF clogging every 3000kms due to pure city usage.

Took a decision to sell the EcoSport in Jan 2023 and listed the car on Team-BHP Classified, which was surprisingly ineffective. I received a total of 3 enquires over a span of 3 months, with only one person actually visiting me to see the car in person. Decided to try my luck with used car platforms.

By March we decided to buy the Tigor AMT as a replacement for my parents and I had the car evaluated by Tata. They made an offer that was lesser than my expectation by almost a lakh. Tried Cars24 and they lowballed me big time.

Finally took a call to sell the car myself and ended up listing the car around end of March in OLX and received a flurry of private messages which were interesting to say the least. Filtered all the experts and shared my contact with only 5 people that I thought were genuinely interested without any of the "what is the final price?" or "Your Expectation is too much ! Ford left India !" retorts before seeing the car.

Finally on 28th April 2023, I received another enquiry on OLX and it seemed genuine, hence shared my number. Received a call immediately and while conversing we both understood we had a common friend that was pretty close to us. Showed the car to the buyer in the next 1 hour and received an advance by afternoon.

After the long weekend, the buyer sent me the balance payment and ended up with a nice learning experience of selling the car. I closed the loan with my bank on a Wednesday, went to the loan branch on Thursday and collected the closure letter, NOC, etc., Immediately booked an appointment online through VAHAN for hypothecation removal before I left the bank. Visited the RTO on my way back and submitted all the documents(Payment receipt, original RC, PUC, Insurance copy, bank NOC, Form 35-2copies and email intimation by bank) the same day. By evening the VAHAN portal was updated and the hypothecation was removed. I handed over the car to the buyer in between after taking all due signatures on delivery note and form for ownership transfer since the full payment was made. I collected the new RC the following week on Tuesday.

Applied for transfer of ownership in VAHAN the same day and emailed all the documents to the buyer, he took a printout of everything and signed where necessary. Then sent all the documents back to my office using a delivery app. I signed everything and gave it back to him the same day on my way home. He submitted the docs the next day at his RTO and after a bit of making him run around they collected everything and within a week the ownership change was completed and also the new physical RC was received by the buyer. Post this initiated the insurance transfer to the new owner via Policy Bazaar, was completed in around 2 weeks and the buyer had to pay the NCB discount I got for the 3rd year insurance renewal.

Overall, by choosing to sell the car myself I managed to get an additional 70k over the highest offer I received, which was the Tata used car division. Also learnt that thanks to VAHAN the RTOs are highly approachable and very very efficient. Spent a total of 750 rupees for hypothecation removal and transfer of ownership. Additionally got the DPF force regen done by Ford using their software to ensure the buyer does not face any issue.

I am extremely content that my EcoSport went to a fellow enthusiast that knew the value of the vehicle and would care for it like I did. Also made another friend in the process.

Special Note to FORD Service: This has definitely been the most pleasant brand experience for me, making my ownership very sweet. Dhruvan FORD service team were always cordial and punctual with their work. The service advisors were always ready to help and kept up their promises. The FORD service costs have been extremely reasonable with the maintenance cost working out to roughly ~48 paise/km.

After a glorious 2 years, 1 month & 18 days and 35470.4 kms of roaming around the country, I parted with Skylar on May 7 2023 at 6:00PM. The EcoSport is a machine that will always have a special place in my heart. To sum up it is a car that can do everything without breaking a sweat.

Fuel Cost and efficiency stats



The parting odometer reading.



A place I cherished the most !



The last picture of my baby being driven away by the new owner.

[Samfromindia]

Originally Posted by Shanksta

Final Update - Skylar Sold !

Odometer Reading : 35470.4 kms at the time of sale.

I am extremely content that my EcoSport went to a fellow enthusiast that knew the value of the vehicle and would care for it like I did. Also made another friend in the process.

End of an era. Glad it happened this way, which is a dream for anyone who loves their car