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Completing the restoration of my father's 1995 Maruti Esteem

16th September 2021, 14:54 by Rahul Nagaraj

I've been completely driving cars with electronic power steering and the shift backwards to a non-powered one was very difficult.

BHPian sohanbala recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

It's been 5 months since the restoration project started, the lock down and delays in parts slowed us down by a month, but now with the interiors and body work is complete. I am glad to finally get the car back on the roads soon.

Putting things back together

The next task was to install all the new OEM Type 1 parts I've sourced so far.

Parts to be installed

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Trunk panel
Reverse lamps
Tail lights - Amber
License plate lamps
Bumpers
Roof Antenna
Front Grille
Headlights
Windshield washer motor
Corner lights - White
Windshield washer Nozzle
Wiper Arms and blade
Rear and Front Bumper

The entire work took 2 days to finish, the bumpers, front grille and trunk panel were painted Black in Dupont 80% matte finish.

Watching her coming back to shape was a bliss. Installing the bumper would have been extremely difficult if not for the new bumper stays. The front and the rear bumper has 2 clips that help hold the lower and upper bumper part together, these stays are specifically made for the esteem making it very difficult to hold the bumpers in place without them.

Lamps

Luckily another Maruti dealer had 2 License Lamps in stock.

I am retaining all the type 1 elements, the amber turn indicators, white floating reverse lamps and the black trunk garnish.

The type 2s had a different tail light with white turn indicators and the trunk garnish replaced to a full-lit red panel.

Pending works included under body coating and glass polishing, the audio setup was kept for later.

Day 3

After numerous days at the garage, finally I'm getting to take her back.

The mechanic was called in to test run the car to identify minor adjustments needed which can be scheduled for a later day. I spent the entire day from morning 9 am till 7 pm in the evening, countless runs to and fro various spare part shops, searching for clips and bulbs as we kept running out.

For panel clips we found the clips supplied by Tata for Tiago to be very sturdy than the Maruti ones. Having spent so many days, everyone at the garage was happy, finally seeing the car readying for roll out. The car kept getting some last minute adjustments like pedal free play, tuning etc.

By evening after seeing me at the garage with the car for the whole day, without getting to drive the car. The shop owner suggested that we go together to get some fuel in the car. Despite of seeing the car all this while and working on it, this was a moment of joy, as if I've never been in this car before. The quick drive felt very smooth as we stopped at the fuel pump all eyes were on the car and us with its gleaming new paint shining through. As we got out of the pump and went a few meters ahead, things didn't feel good as a slight judder started creeping in. I went cold as the engine kept choking, we had to pull over with the engine refusing to start. Since it was a downward slope we were able to pull over safely without the engine power. My first concern was "did i get the wrong fuel ", without another thought I ran back to the pump, a breath of relief as I saw it was indeed the petrol only bay from which we had fuelled. In the midst of the crowd I ran back to the car, a few more attempts and the engine stated, but sounded very constrained. We turned back to the garage, on the way back my mechanic was saying it's something with the fuel line and it had to be the pump.

For the past 10 years or more, we were running on an aftermarket pump when the OEM ones failed. Back at the garage upon checking, it was indeed the fuel pump. Earlier I had decided not to go back to the stock setup as the assembly isn't available anymore for non mpfi Esteem, only other option being to replace the motor and retrofit another one (instead of the aftermarket pump in the engine bay)

I decided to try my luck to find one, next day after hopping a few scrapyards, we found an esteem (carb) which was drove in recently, It had the stock pump assembly. Got it removed and checked there, everything looked okay.

Cleaned it up well and swapped the fuel filter. Now the new trouble was to get the fuel gauge working properly. After fiddling for an entire afternoon we finally got the gauge to work properly, the float was slightly misaligned as they took it out, to make matters tough my tank was almost full, making it heavy. We had to take the tank out thrice after installation, lastly we just swapped the float from the old assembly, and this helped.

Now going back to the default setup, the pump noise from the engine bay was gone. Since we have completed the one work I skipped - it was more like bound to happen, I told myself.

Driving her back

Finally, I'm taking the car for a test run myself, the plan was to take the car home later that evening, for the past few months, I've been completely driving cars with electronic power steering and the shift backwards to a non-powered one was very difficult, I learned to drive in this car, as I started driving I recall my father saying "move the steering when in motion, this makes it easy".

Soon I got used to the steering, shifting was a breeze with turns needing some extra effort. I was pleasantly surprised by how the engine pulled now. We were easily doing 110 on the highways, I didn't want to push further as I wasn't fully adjusted to the braking yet. Being delighted with the drive I decided to take a parallel road me and my father used to go for drives long back, it was a straight stretch along the railway lines with very less traffic. As I was enjoying the drive, out of the blue my battery light comes up, I'm cruising as the speed drops with no engine power, as I pulled the blinkers to pull over they don't work either. A blown fuse for sure, anyway I informed my mechanic and he instantly came over, it indeed was the main fuse blown. We replaced it cranked again and BAM! , it blew again one after the other. By the 4th fuse. We decided to tow her back to the garage.

As we reached the garage everyone was a bit concerned by this. The worst part was having a 2 day lock-down from the very next day. It felt hard at this point, throughout the next 2 days my mechanic would call me every day consoling on what happened. He suggested we check the entire electrical wiring again, I was wondering if the changed fuel pump had anything to do with all these.

Meanwhile back at home, we had cleared the garage to park the Esteem as I was planning to bring the car, my 6 year old nephew being the most excited for the cars arrival.

Trying to see the better side, I was glad that these issues didn't pop up after I've brought the car home.

Two days later, we brought in an electrical technician, after checking the wiring he confirmed the wiring is clean and insisted it can't be the pump either, after spending a couple of hours we zeroed one the culprit "radiator fan motor" .The fan runs perfectly but seizes randomly. Its the faulty fan that kept blowing the fuse.

It seems to be the original fan that came with the car. Having run for all these years, I wasn't surprised that it busted.

The faulty fan assembly removed

The next hurdle

Now MGP had informed that they do not have the new motor or fan assembly and it's a closed part, hearing this we went back to the scrap yard from where pump was taken. He had asked for a premium, hence decided to come back later if no other options are available. On my way back, I checked with the store who gave me the AC fan motor, after checking their entire stock, they had one full fan assembly for the Esteem by Denso at Rs 2140 MRP.

Plugging the fan in was a quick job, and voila the fuse wasn't blowing anymore. This time I decided to run the car a bit more before taking the car home, so next in line was a good wash and anti-rust under-body coating.

Under-body Coating

The car was taken to the service yard by evening, they lifted the car and washed the under-body thoroughly. We decided to leave the car overnight so it can dry by morning after which the coating was applied.

I decided not to drive the car until evening even though l was told it will dry in 2 hrs.

Glass Polishing

Next day, got all glasses polished for watermark removal. They did an excellent job in cleaning the side glasses from inside.

Since the windshield had deeper wiper marks Cerium polishing was advised, which was done later at a detailing studio.

Windshield after cerium polishing

The wiper marks have gone and faint scratches considerably lightened. I believe the initial cleaning did help a lot for the polishing,

Tyres

For tyres I decided to go with Yokohama 175/70-13 Earth Series. Found them a lot more silent.

The tyres were balanced and vehicle alignment was checked.

Homecoming

We've clocked almost 100 km after the radiator fan change, no other issues so far except for door with a slight noise in bad roads the hinges need to be changed. I have ordered hinges and stopper through MGP, hinges are closed for order, and luckily one of their branch have them in stock, which will be redirected to my dealer.

Here are some pictures we took on our way home.