6 years with my Tata Hexa XTA: Here's how my experience has been

Dechroming the car has been on my list for long. Decided to do that now. Two step correction with protection, interior deep cleaning were opted alongside.

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This thread has been dead for well over a couple of years now. I thought it was only fair to give in an update about how the ownership has been with our car now that we’re well past the 6th year mark.

This car came in to mark a special occasion in all our lives. Our parents had completed 25 years of their married life. Cut to 6-years later, they’re now well past their 31st year of being married. Since it was now well-over 6 years, the itch to do something with it had only gone up. Given the fact that most ideal upgrade we were aiming at is dearer to a crore rupees than half a crore at this point and even then it wasn’t an upgrade worth upgrading to. Being extremely content with the status-quo, it made no financial or emotional sense to splurge on an upgrade. Why fix when something isn’t broke in the first place?

Anyways, in the third and fourth year of ownership we did run into a few issues. Minor but irritating nonetheless. In the past 2.5 years, car has moved from place to place wherever my dad’s job took him to. March 2021, we were supposed to a roadtrip from Hyderabad to Arunachal Pradesh (Tezu was the place where my dad was stationed). The covid scare had revived just then. Shipping the car down was a no-brainer. After being in that part of Arunachal, dad did venture out on his fair share of expeditions with the car by his side. Exactly an year later, on a promotion, dad was transferred to Gangtok, Sikkim.

What better than doing a roadtrip instead of just driving down from point A to B? Dad being the amazing planner that he is, chalked out a 10-day itinerary to cover various other places in the North East. Tawang being one of them. After covering the states of Arunachal, Assam and Meghalaya fairly extensively we made it to Sikkim.

Come July 2022, car was well over 5.5 years from the date of MFD. Dad being the proactive guy that he is, decided to do up a lot of stuff as a part of the preventive maintenance. Changed a lot of rubber hoses, water pump, power steering fluid alongside the usual set of recommended jobs for the age. Timing kit replacement was recommended for 5-years/150k kms. That was done alongside as well. Dealer chosen was Lexican Motors Siliguri. Dad was extremely happy with their service and he spent a cool two days at the workshop getting all of it fixed under his supervision.

Dec 2022, this was when we decided to drive down from Gangtok to Bhubaneswar for the annual get-together meet of the Hexa owners. Last meet happened in Dec 2019 (Just before Covid) in Mangalore, KA. We couldn’t miss this year given we were meeting after three years. The drive was good. The drive can be detailed out in a travelogue someday (but will never happen knowing me) but that’s that.

Come June 2023, dad was posted out from Gangtok and off he went to Wellington, TN. Near Ooty. We decided to drive down from Gangtok to Ooty by road because why not :P

Gangtok-Siliguri-Varanasi-Prayagraj-Jabalpur-Nagpur-Hyd was the decided course for the trip. However, being the month of Sravan, the drive from Varanasi to Prayagraj turned out to be a disaster so we decided to drop Prayagraj and continue with the rest of the course. The drive was good as usual.

Once the car was back in Hyderabad, we then proceeded to claim the insurance for the first time in 6+ years of ownership. The rear bumper and taillight were damaged sometime last year while parking the car. I had bought a set of gloss black boot insert and matte black loading lip found in the Hexa XM back in 2019 but never managed to install all of it in one go. This was the chance to do it.

Dad only had a week to spend in Hyd. We had notified the workshop (Prathammalik Cars, Tolichowki) well in advance about the parts we needed. Since it was anyways in the workshop decided to carry out the general service as well. Brake pads too were changed this time around, at 48,260 kms on the odo (this one sees zero commute so the mileage clocked is purely from roadtrips). Post this, it was time to drop it at Autopia (my second home) for a thorogh detailing job inside-out followed by a few other tweaks.

Dechroming the car has been on my list for long. Decided to do that now. Two step correction with protection, interior deep cleaning were opted alongside. Dad wanted to get the brake callipers painted in red (I was against it, but his car) so that was done too. The end result was much better than expected and it didn’t stand out which is good. I also wanted a heat rejection sunfilm because the factory glasses failed miserably at keeping the sun at bay on our roadtrips. So in came the Stek Smart 70. Ideally I would have wanted the Nex 70 but the stock hadn’t come in ages. With that done, managed to complete most of the bits that I’d planned for the car.

Next set of upgrades happened when dad drove down to Ooty. He decided to stop by at Bangalore for a night so we could do two more things, a remap and steering wheel refurb. Steering wheel refurb happened courtesy of Krithi Car Care. Coming to the remap, tuner chosen was Wolf Moto. Their dealer partner Engineering Exponents was the one who did our car. All of it happened as per the plan and dad was too tired at the end of it that he didn’t really test the map out.

Next day on his way to Ooty, dad called me to tell me that he wasn’t really happy with the change. Took in his feedback and wired it to Rajiv at Wolf Moto. Being the receptive guy that he is, two weeks from then he managed to fix all of my dad’s complaints with the map in this one. Dad also got the headlights upgraded around the same time. So now dad is thoroughly enjoying his well over half a decade old “new” car to the fullest.

As it enters the 7th year of ownership, I would like to carry out ATF replacement soon. Should hopefully happen sometime next year. Once that’s done, we have a keeper that’s going to stay for long. In terms of other upgrades, the headunit has been a long time coming and me being spoilt for convenience with CarPlay in my other cars back home, not having it in the Hexa is a pain. So that is on cards since I’m not really into the android HUs that are swarming the market and there are a ton of plug and play options available for the Hexa too. But just not my cup of tea. Plus get the dampening done when I do up the headunit upgrade. I just hope it doesn’t turn into a comprehensive audio upgrade haul (neither have that kind of time, patience or money to spend) but you never know.

Signing off with a few pictures for viewing pleasure:

Back home after being away from home for well over a couple of years. Also getting acquainted to a new member in the family.

Both the members in the family decided to have a spa-day at once because why not

The man and the machine. These two have seen and done a lot of things together and here’s to many more years of them doing things together

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