My 2006 Swift: Bumper replacement, B pillar wrapping & other updates

The front and rear bumpers had taken quite a bit of damage and I was in no mood to repair them.

BHPian Ashtoncastelino recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

High Security Registration Plates:

Placed order for them in November first week and got the appointment date on 23 November. Called up Abharan Motors Nittur to check if the plates had arrived on the appointment date but it did not, two days later I get a SMS that my plates have reached the dealer. Rang them up and they confirmed.

Took the Swift and made a stop at my sticker shop to collect a small transparent film and reached the dealership sharp at 9am since dad had to rush with the car for the day. I pasted the transparent film on the left portion of the windshield.

Joined the queue and observed as to how they were performing the work on other vehicles. I noticed that they were doing it in a hurry manner and sticking the windshield TRP( Third Registration Plate) with lots of air bubbles. I kindly asked them to hand me the TRP so I stuck it properly on the film that I stuck on the windshield.

So apparently this TPR consists of two stickers, one is the holographic text of the Number plate, Laser encoded numbers of the plates and your Date of registration and the other sticker is the background sticker which is blue for petrol and orange for diesels. The guy just handed the 1st part of the sticker and not the background blue sticker. When questioned he mentioned they ran out of stock.

The senior in-charge heard all this and scolded him as to why he is lazy to go get it from inside. Another guy went inside and got an entire bundle of those background stickers and gave me one.

Now it was time for mounting the plates, I saw my plates and was immediately disappointed with the quality of the plates, the black text stickers were already chipping, but nothing can be done now.

Stepping on the plates to drill them.

The guy was stamping on the plates with his dirty shoes and drilling the plates, when I saw this I bought it to his notice and strictly told to use bubble wrap for if he were to step on my plates and drill. I got annoyed at how careless they were with this entire thing. They could have handled things better.

Forced him to use bubble wrap.

Compressor Belt Tensioner Change:

The compressor belt tensioner was making horrible bearing noises so to narrow down to the fault, I removed the tensioner and the noise had disappeared. Got a new tensioner from MGP and installed it at home. It was fairly easy.

• Part Number- 95130M75J00
• Price- ₹935

Old vs New Tensioner.

Wrapping the B Pillars:

I had a roll of carbon fiber vinyl and time in hand during a weekend, Thought of wrapping the B-Pillar since the OEM wrap on the pillars was wearing out, removed them and applied the CF vinyl using my trusty heat gun. Fairly easy. Only time will tell how long they will last. It’s been about 4 months since I applied and they have held up pretty well. Maybe on another lazy weekend I will wrap the A pillars as well.

Sourcing the front and rear bumpers:

The Front and Rear bumpers had taken quite a bit of damage and I was in no mood to repair them. Decided to go for new bumpers but MSIL has discontinued the type 1 Swift bumpers since last year now and I didn’t know this until I went to MGP and enquired about it. I was hell bent on retaining at least the type 1 look for the front bumper. Raised a complaint to Maruti and within 2 weeks they shipped Type 1 bumper and Type 2 rear bumper to my MGP. Collected the same from MGP and will be painting the bumpers and installing them later this year.

Tyre Alignment:

Again a regular habit developed after plonking in the Continentals to align and balance them every 5000kms.

Alignment values

Was happy to see the alignment was not disturbed much at all. Jae’s did a good job like always, Mr Praveen interacts with every customer regardless of the car and I feel that’s a very nice approach to understand the customer. I’m really really happy with these Continental UC6’s, the grip they offer and the road noise which is almost nill makes the drive even more pleasant.

Regards

Ashton Castelino

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