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800km road trip in my Ford Aspire diesel: Key takeaways from the drive

8th January 2024, 15:03 by Dev Shah

The car felt a whole lot different because of the new tyres, the muffler back on and the upgraded brake pads from few months ago.

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It had been a while since I did a Kerala trip apart from the usual Chennai trips which happens every year. The last trip was last December and although Christmas holidays are the wrong time to visit a place, especially towards Kerala by road, I had no choice this time. I had to visit Calicut and a nearby town called Quilandi. The car was loaded with luggage and passengers and we left around 6am mid week. The traffic on the Blore-Mys highway wasn't very bad and I was able to keep a steady 100 kmph all the way to Mysore with hardly any braking and it took just an hour because of that.

The car felt a whole lot different because of the new tyres, the muffler back on and the upgraded brake pads from few months ago. The new map as well felt different with the muffler fitted back. Earlier when I had got the map updated, the initial torque had reduced and the lag felt more although the engine felt more powerful once the turbo kicked in. Now, the power delivery has become how it was on the earlier map which is linear and the power is bumped as well, even with less throttle inputs. There is some amount of roughness that has creeped in which I am not sure if it is because of the exhaust flow restricted or because of some other reason. The idle feels noisy too and I feel the engine mounts may have to be replaced.

Coming the tyres. I hardly drove with the new tyres before the trip, so the running in of the new tyres was during the trip. The Conti UC6 surely felt different in terms grip and ride although I couldn't explore the grip it offers fully because of travelling with family. But on few occasions when I floored the gas pedal, I could feel the tyres gripping more than the old ones. The one thing I noticed with these tyres were the tyre noise which was only slightly better than the worn out Apollo Alnac 4g. Maybe it will get better as it gets used more. On well surfaced roads, it is fine, but on roads that have a rough surface, it gets noisy. Overall, with a loaded car and good speeds, it did a good job.

The overall fuel efficiency was around 19-20 kmpl mainly because on the return, I was doing around 3k rpm on the most part if the Mysore-Blore expressway and the traffic on Kerala roads being single lane always leads to some hard revving for overtakes and constant braking and accelerating.

The coolant temps did creep up again on two occasions. One was when I was climbing the ghats to Waynad in slow moving traffic and the other in Blore traffic. Usual coolant temp is 79-81c and on these occasions, it was between 85-90c. Not alarming.

The upgraded brake pads were a big help because the traffic on Kerala roads are unpredictable. Although I had driven multiple time on this route and others in Kerala, every time there is a close call because of careless manners of two wheeler riders and some cars who just stop with no signal on the road.

The trip was around 800 kms and the car has crossed 46000 kms.

Probably the only peaceful drive I have had between Bangalore and Mysore. The return reminded me of the old road because of traffic and every other car, racing.