[spadix]

Originally Posted by MileCruncher

That's an average of 50ms/Day which is quite high I must say. Even in my case, its only 57.5Kms/Day

Congrats on achieving 10k mark. Party ho jaye

Thank you, Ani bhai! I must join the TBHP-Hyd next drive meet to celebrate and party. I've missed the last two due to some unavoidable circumstances.

I think Stormy has been pretty dormant over the last few months, perhaps also considering the impending change. Maybe that's why it's only 57.5 as of now?

Originally Posted by MileCruncher

BTW if you don't use the trip meter, how do you calculate fuel mileage and trip details.

I maintain a daily trip + transaction log in a fairly detailed spreadsheet. I use this spreadsheet for TCO computations and service record stuff as well.

When the fuel gauge reaches two bars (there are 20 total) I keep an eye out for the yellow reserve light. Apparently the car checks for reserve every 7 km. This is what the SA told me, although it didn't make a lot of sense (I think it'd be more or less real-time). I make a mental note of the kilometer reading on the trip the moment the yellow light comes on. At the end of the day, mental note is translated into bits on the spreadsheet.

Whenever I can I then fill up exactly 40 litres. I then wait until the next yellow light on. Rinse and repeat.

Every once in a while I also compute the F/E for a longer cycle. That is I keep filling up before hitting the yellow light and so compute the F/E over longer distances than the roughly 400 - 440 kms I get from a 40-litre cycle. This smooths out days of heavy 1st gear crawls against relaxed highway runs very effectively.

I find this easier than fiddling with the display reset buttons whilst driving, but maybe that's just me.

Regards,
spadix

[spadix]

Persistent effort by Pride Honda Service has now banished that annoying rattle from the rear of the car. I thought the rattle was from the rear parcel tray/shelf but the real culprit was the roof lining!

Here's a history of the problem and its resolution -

• Rattle first detected some 15 days into ownership. It felt like it was coming from the rear parcel tray.
• Reported when BQ went in for her 1st FS (30 days). Problem identified as the cover of the parcel tray-mounted stop light and was fixed.
• Problem resurfaces around mid-way between 1st and 2nd FS (roughly 75 days into ownership).
• Reported when BQ went in for her 2nd FS (90 days). I told them about the 1st FS so they probably only looked at the tray/stop light and not much else. They said it was fixed but I could hear it the moment I drove out of the service centre.
• Lived with the problem until the 3rd FS (180 days), which was when I reported it again. Their theory was that it was being caused by the seat belt recoil spring. I didn't buy it and asked for more investigation.
• Around 2 weeks after the 3rd FS, Pride Honda mobile service team conducts ~1.5 hrs of diagnosis one day and "fixes" it (mostly by using some double-sided tape), only for the problem to reappear in the evening.
• The same mechanic spends ~2 hrs the following Saturday, but despite his best efforts is unable to fix the issue.
• Pride schedules another diagnosis for the next weekend (which was the last Saturday) and sends in a different mechanic. Another 1~1.5 hrs later, the exact problem area is identified.
• For now, it's double-sided tape with instructions that if the noise resurfaces, the roof lining would be taken out and re-fitted. I've taken BQ over some really rough roads since Saturday and couldn't hear the rattle. These were the very roads on which the rattle was earlier very prominent.

I had a very lousy opinion of Pride Honda Service until before the 3rd FS, but their attention and conduct during and after the 3rd FS has been exemplary. In particular, the service advisor and the two mechanics who worked on the car, the service center manager and the customer service manager were totally "plugged in" and ensured that the problem was resolved even though there were times in the middle when I gave up. I guess my constant recollection of my rattle-free old M800 - that cost 1/8th of what BQ did - geed them up!

The problem might resurface for all I know, but the good bit is that we now know where to look for it. That was the biggest problem. The fix is just a technical issue which anyone can then handle.

The bad bit is that the absence of this major rattle has uncovered a couple of other very, very minor rattles elsewhere , but those are minimal and I'll get them removed over time.

---------------------------------------

In other news, BQ suffered multiple shallow scratches to the front left fender and door on a small TBHP (Hyd) drive meet yesterday. It happened as an oncoming tractor left me very little space on the kachcha road and the car scraped against some dry bushes off the road. This was a bumpy unpaved mud road so we were only just inching along, which means there was no other damage.

I have no pictures of the damage because I don't want to keep such pictures around . I got the problem areas lightly polished even before I reached home and now BQ's as good as it was before the incident.

An eventful weekend for BQ, all in all.

Here's a picture of BQ at the meet. This was taken before the incident. There are a couple of other pictures of BQ getting polished. I don't have those with me right now and will post them later.



Regards,
spadix

[MileCruncher]

Good to know that the scratches have gone. But do let us know what was done as this information will come in handy for most of us.

Cheers

[spadix]

Originally Posted by MileCruncher

Good to know that the scratches have gone. But do let us know what was done as this information will come in handy for most of us.

Thank you, Ani bhai!

I was too lazy to check out the exact compound they used to polish but it was a Meguiar's product. The polishing pad was a soft one, probably wool-based. It looked very similar to the third variety shown on this page.

It's difficult to make it out from this picture, but here goes -



Regards,
spadix

[dot]

@spadix, the pic of BQ against the rugged terrain looks awesome. At the cost of repeating, I will still go ahead to say BQ looks SO good.

[spadix]

Originally Posted by dot

@spadix, the pic of BQ against the rugged terrain looks awesome. At the cost of repeating, I will still go ahead to say BQ looks SO good.

Thanks a lot for those words of praise, dot!

I've been very lazy in terms of photographing BQ. I know a place, right next door to work, which has lush greenery and beautiful landscaping. A photo-shoot of BQ there in the monsoons would be killer. The unfortunate problem is that my commute means that BQ would be soaking in slush by the time I reach the place (~11 kms from home with a 400 m dust track at the very beginning that is the approach road I must take to hit the main road).

After seeing shuvc's heroic 22.4 kmpl effort I thought I'll drive BQ around with a very light foot for a couple of tankfuls of petrol. I recorded the distance travelled between two successive appearances of the reserve warning light, with a note of how much fuel was fed to the car.

Here are the results for the last few times before this new style of driving kicked in -

773 (77.24 litres)
402.8 (40 litres)
599.1 (58 litres) - This included the 3rd FS where a drop in mileage can be expected due to lots of idling and short test drives
421.2 (40 litres) - This included a ~100 km highway run. I saw shuvc's post just before this stretch ended

Here's the result for the first run -

456.5 (40 litres)

The last 3/4 days of this run included a couple of short rips. The bigger problems though were a weekend of crawling around in peak weekend-evening city traffic, and at least half an hour (if not more) spent idling one day to keep the AC on (an unavoidable situation).

Perhaps these were offset by a ~60 km highway run that the car did in the same period. I can't say for sure.

I'm on to the second mileage run now.

The difference is worth it, in my opinion, in our maddening traffic. My commutes are taking the same time (maybe 2/3 minutes more if at all) and this is giving me a lot of peace of mind as well as time to react to situations on the road.

Regards,
spadix

[mobike008]

Hey Prashant, glad to know the scratches have disappeared. I was stunned to see it that day as it ran across the entire side length of BQ

Btw, I dont see much difference in FE despite you driving with a light foot. It still seems to range between 10kmpl to 10.50kmpl?

Am I missing something here?

[spadix]

Originally Posted by mobike008

Hey Prashant, glad to know the scratches have disappeared. I was stunned to see it that day as it ran across the entire side length of BQ

Yeah, it's hard to make out now that there were scratches. The only thing that gives anything out is that the polished panels have almost no swirl marks whereas the rest of the car is full of them. But even that difference is not visible from a distance, obviously.

Originally Posted by mobike008

Btw, I dont see much difference in FE despite you driving with a light foot. It still seems to range between 10kmpl to 10.50kmpl?

Am I missing something here?

There's a significant difference. Earlier, it was around 10 kmpl as you noted (if you leave out the 2nd last run). The last run was 11.4 kmpl (456/40). That's a 14% increase. I'm trying to better it with the current tankful. Let's see.

It's easy to miss the difference because the distances run in both cases are 4xx kms, so it's very easy to think "4xx/40 ~= 10-and-something". In fact, this is why a Bata shoe that costs 599.99 INR is a "500 rupee item" and not a "600 rupee item" .

Regards,
spadix

[dot]

Originally Posted by spadix

That's a 14% increase.

Wow. Light foot does work. But has it decreased the happiness of driving BQ?

[mobike008]

Originally Posted by dot

Wow. Light foot does work. But has it decreased the happiness of driving BQ?

I would think so it would without any doubt.

Prashant, I drive the WA like the aliens are after me and with 100% AC in city traffic get about 11.25kmpl.

I could never muster up the courage or the patience to be gentle with the gas.

[spadix]

Originally Posted by dot

Wow. Light foot does work. But has it decreased the happiness of driving BQ?

Originally Posted by mobike008

I would think so it would without any doubt.

Surprisingly enough it does *not* for me.

Let me elaborate the exact change in my driving style. There isn't much of a difference, if at all, between the top revs I used to do earlier vs. now on a consistent basis. All I do now is ensure I don't brake often. I'm just trying to use the throttle to control the car's speed, shift gears with the speed as necessary and avoid braking/re-acceleration as much as possible. It's hard (not to mention dangerous) to get BQ to do upwards of 5k rpm on a consistent basis on our city roads anyway. I might as well save fuel than look for non-existent thrills.

The difference in F/E isn't extra large mainly because I still have a stretch of 6 kms of empty road en route (one way, so that's 12 km daily) where I don't have to brake anyway. This is an undulating, curvy 4-lane divided road devoid of traffic. So even with a light foot, in 5th, BQ is doing enough to keep me happy . The best part is to see how effortlessly BQ overtakes from that starting point, because the first torque wave starts from 2k rpm, which is where I cruise at.

In places where the roads are full of traffic, it doesn't matter. You hardly get a chance to exercise the throttle anyway. But it's a challenge to follow the "minimum braking" philosophy here, because some vehicle will swerve in to the gap you've created between yourself and the vehicle in front of you.

Every once in a while I rip (4-5k rpm) to get ahead of slow-moving vehicles and then have a stretch of empty road to myself where I'm back to light foot (but in 5th, again).

Originally Posted by dot

Prashant, I drive the WA like the aliens are after me and with 100% AC in city traffic get about 11.25kmpl.

Well, that's the advantage of a diesel.

Regards,
spadix

[dot]

Originally Posted by spadix

Surprisingly enough it does *not* for me.

Well, that is always nice to know.

In my experience, during one of my tankfull to tankfull runs I was going super light foot to see any difference. Found it to be a menace. And there was hardly any extra reward. So got rid of the style and now follow normal driving style which is pleasing enough and surprisingly, pretty efficient, as you might have seen in one of my posts in the long term review thread.

Originally Posted by spadix

All I do now is ensure I don't brake often. I'm just trying to use the throttle to control the car's speed, shift gears with the speed as necessary and avoid braking/re-acceleration as much as possible.

This a very good point. And you have a manual transmission, so engine braking is possible.

Originally Posted by spadix

I might as well save fuel than look for non-existent thrills.

So true, what is the point of ripping if one has to brake the next instant.

Originally Posted by spadix

Every once in a while I rip (4-5k rpm)

Why only till 4-5k? Is it that, by that time some obstacle comes up?

[spadix]

Originally Posted by dot

In my experience, during one of my tankfull to tankfull runs I was going super light foot to see any difference. Found it to be a menace. And there was hardly any extra reward. So got rid of the style and now follow normal driving style which is pleasing enough and surprisingly, pretty efficient, as you might have seen in one of my posts in the long term review thread.

Yes, I remember reading that. I read another comment (and posted in reply) on the Civic maintenance and must-do thread as well.

I could summarize as follows -

1. Total heavy foot (one extreme) - Rip and brake hard all the time. Manic acceleration followed by manic deceleration. I actually think this is not fun at all unless you're on a race track. It's mentally very exhausting in our traffic. Moreover, it saves absolutely no time. I used to drive like this very regularly until a year back.

2. Total light foot (other extreme) - Keep RPM strictly below, say, 2k RPM come what may. This as you have noted is an absolute menace and is impractical. You'll get fantastic mileage but at what cost?

3. Normal driving - This was where I was getting 10 kmpl. Generally smooth with a few instances (around 20% of the time) of sudden acceleration/braking. Depending on the mood you could switch to modes 1 or 2 for a few seconds or minutes.

4. Normal driving with increased planning/anticipation to avoid braking - This is what I'm doing now.

Originally Posted by dot

Why only till 4-5k? Is it that, by that time some obstacle comes up?

Usually it's because I've already overtaken by that time. Many a time it's also because an obstacle comes up.

Regards,
spadix

[dot]

Originally Posted by spadix

Yes, I remember reading that. I read another comment (and posted in reply).

I know, my friend.

Originally Posted by spadix

1. Total heavy foot (one extreme) -
It's mentally very exhausting in our traffic. Moreover, it saves absolutely no time.

Absolutely true. It is distressing for others on the road as well. I think there is an (our) age effect also.

Originally Posted by spadix

2. Total light foot (other extreme) -
You'll get fantastic mileage but at what cost?

No doubt we both agree on this.

Originally Posted by spadix

4. Normal driving with increased planning/anticipation to avoid braking - This is what I'm doing now.

Most sensible.

Originally Posted by spadix

Many a time it's also because an obstacle comes up.

Same happens to me. Thats why I asked. Very rarely I get a road situation to redline.

[vasoo]

Good to see two "civilians" following the same principle I am following. For high traffic roads and city driving I follow the "anticipation method" to minimize braking and avoid RPMs above 3k. I get an average FE of about 10-11 kmpl, with a judicious use of paddles.

I am not very sedate while driving on highways through. Tends to get a bit aggressive on good open roads, mostly touching a speed of 170 and above. But I still manage to get an overall FE of about 13-14 on such drives.