Red Beauty - Owning Experience

@nkrishnap thanks

20000 km Milestone:

Red beauty covered the 20000km milestone successfully. Driven the car in different road conditions right from Bangalore city traffic (yes including silkboard junction), lot of highway drives, hill stations yercaud and kodaikanal and village roads and every km is a happy experience. And the vehicle is giving around 19 kmpl in highways and around 14 kmpl in city traffic.

I did wheel alignment and balancing today in sai iyengar tyrez bannerghatta road, bilekahalli. Last alignment done in 15000 km service but I noticed left front wheel having uneven wear and tear. Alignment and balancing costed 600 INR. Attaching the alignment work sheet. I noticed that they have punto 2009 metrics and asked the technician and the store in charge. Both said that the readings are similar for both punto 2009 and grande punto and they are using it for all customers and no issues with it. Hope there should not be any issues. Have to see and realign in fiat service center if needed.

Thanks,
Ravi

@ravimathi : are you seeing any issues after WA/WB? You can try at Madhus, Langford road next time.
AFAIK all the GP WA readings are same. Whereas FIAT has rolled out new set of values for Evo. Anyways just confirm at FASS.
BTW where do you service your car? how is the service centre.

@Deepak yesterday driven the car in city for 10 kilometers and didn't find any issues as such. I confirmed it already with service advisor.
Vecto motors hosur road. They are good. Service advisors listen to you patiently and fix the problems.

Sure I'll try madhus next time.

Driven with passion Now red beauty shows it proudly.
Sticker there looks much better in the car than in this picture. May be I should take a picture in sunlight and post.

Nice place you found there @ravimathi

@pabhishek thanks

I upgraded my OEM JK tyres (165/80/R14) to Yokohama Earth 1 (185/70/R14) tyres today. Had a decent experience with JK tyres and covered 23956 kms without any puncture. Started noticing uneven wear and tear in one of the tyres and other tyres are left with little tread pattern. With few long drives planned, I thought its the time to upgrade tyres. As I do highway drives and city drives equally, I wanted tyres that perform better in both cases and considered Michelin - Energy XM2 - 185/70 R14 and Yokohama Earth 1 - 185/70 R14.

After reading reviews and user experiences, decided to go for Yokohama Earth 1. Once decided the tyres, last week checked prices in Sai Iyengar and Sons Bannerghatta Road and Madhu tyres. In Madhu tyres it was quoted as 4500 INR per tyre whereas in Sai Iyengars it is 4400 INR per tyre including fitting charges. But I found both offers bit costly after reading this post http://www.teamfiat.com/threads/team-fiat-tyre-upgrade-guide.11870/page-42#post-841945561 by @pdash. So today I went to Sai Iyengars again and to my luck, Mr. Nithin, owner of the shop was there. He is a nice guy to talk and when I showed him the above link he said that it was an offer sale and now they are selling the same for 4400 INR and reduced it to 4250 INR. When I said that I am their regular customer who is doing balancing and alignment checks at their shop only, he said he value such customers more and those few 100s are not important when considering the regular customers. He himself reduced the price to 4100 INR for a tire. I happily sealed the deal. They offered balancing and alignment free of cost. So total money spent for 4 tyres is 16400 INR.
Tyres manufactured week: 4115 which is 1st week of October, 2015.

Comparing my old tyres it is silent which is expected and can't comment on things like road grip, braking and ride as I haven't driven much (shop is less than 3 kms away from home). Hope tyres will do the job well without any issues.

@ravimathi

Uneven tyre wear is mainly due to wrong alignment and Fiat cars are known to live with out of the range alignment values. Its good to know you upgraded the tyres to the Yokos which are known to be silent. Just keep an eye on the alignment coz if you notice same issue happening with the new tyres too, then get the alignment checked in detail.

@ghodlur thanks. Actually I checked alignment in FASS and outside as well after 20k km. Guess its due to tyre quality but yes as you said I need to track these new tyres to make sure everything is ok.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 1, 2015, Original Post Date: Nov 1, 2015 ---

If anyone is looking for a spare wheel (165/70/R14) with some decent life, I have two tyres which I can share in bangalore. Cost shouldn't be a problem. My post in TFI Classifieds is here.
http://www.teamfiat.com/threads/jk-tornado-tyres-165-80-r14.15146/