[pdma]

All set for the early morning trip tomorrow. I gave the car a through wash and vacuumed the interiors. Checked the engine bay no leaks, all oil levels are up to the mark and nothing suspicious was observed. Got the car refueled, tires were checked and PSI maintained as per the recommendations. I used an alternate vehicle to commute to work and the Linea is getting some rest at home.
I spoke to a 2 people who recently did Hyderabad to Shirdi just a couple of weeks back and both of them said that its better to take the Zaheerabad > Shalopur > Shirdi route and the patch of bad roads between zaheerabad > Sholapur is no longer than 100-150KM. So we have decided to try this section during the onward journey and will take a call on the return based on the experience tomorrow.

The regular updates on FE stats below after the refill today morning.



Trip distance before the refill.



Average speed maintained in the interval.



Updated FE historical chart.



Cheers,
pdma.

[pdma]

Post this trip I realized how true this statement from FIAT is.
This trip was different, the roads were overall above average to pathetic almost all through the journey unlike the trip's earlier where the roads were very pleasant and more enjoyable, However the machine excelled yet again
showcasing its capabilities & strengths in handling any kind of tarmac. The Linea was very composed and even managed speeds around 90kmph on bad patches and it ensured that its passengers were comfortable.

Onward Journey - Hyderabad to Shirdi.



As planned we started early and took the Zaheerabad route and it was pretty bad till Sholapur, the Sholapur to Thimburni road was the only stretch with an excellent toll road on this route. The road conditions took a 180 degree turn from excellent to pathetic between thimburni to vithal Kamath ( where we stopped for lunch) en-route Ahmednagar. Post lunch the road conditions improved from pathetic to above average with some pieces of good roads here and there. We did this stretch amidst heavy rains, the car was very stable on wet roads and it stuck to the line where it was pointed to without being nervous. Ahmednagar Shridi route was very pleasant as well however it took a lot of time for us to negotiate the heavy traffic in Ahmednagar.

A picture of the stretch between Humnabad to Omerga.



We stopped at Surabhi a small restaurant after crossing Omerga for breakfast.





FE stats at breakfast.



A picture of the stretch between Omerga to Sholapur



We found this temple on the way and a picture was clicked through the windshield.



@ Vithal Kamath for Lunch on the Thimburni - Ahmednagar road. Clean place and good food.



Fuel efficiency at lunch break.



We drove in some heavy rain and the car took a coat of slush & murk.



End of day 1 FE stats.



Return Journey - Shirdi to Hyderabad.



On the return we decided to try the alternate route via Aurangabad, Nizamabad and I should admit that this even though slightly longer was much better than previous route. This route too had some very bad stretches however they were comparatively less in number and in most cases the road conditions were between good & above average. The roads were very good in some stretches example between Nanded - Nizamabad and the final stretch between Dichpalli - Hyderabad was an awesome toll road where the car clocked some high speeds and gobbled with ease some monstrous curves in triple digit speeds.

A picture of road clicked enroute.



The car received a good foam wash @ K force the next day and some pictures of the same.

@ K force madinaguda.



Before wash.



Post wash.



Odo at the end of the trip.



Overall the 1300+ KM drive was pretty good and my respect for this lovely machine has just gone a notch higher after experiencing the way it can handle any tarmac that you want it to roll on.

Cheers,
pdma.

[puntoer]

Congratulations for your new Linea pdma! The review was nice and thanks for sharing your experience. Nice choice of color. Linea is one of the finest cars. I love the rear stance of the car. The fuel efficiency you are extracting from this beauty is fantastic.

Happy mile crunching!

[puchoo]

Good to read that mostly all your updates reflect an immense satisfaction with the car and ownership, i remember all the many apprehensions prior to buying it so good to know that all goes well!!

[arun_josie]

Originally Posted by pdma

Overall the 1300+ KM drive was pretty good and my respect for this lovely machine has just gone a notch higher after experiencing the way it can handle any tarmac that you want it to roll on.

Cheers,
pdma.

Nice updates and pics there! I am sure, you will be already planning for the next long drive

[pdma]

Originally Posted by puntoer

The fuel efficiency you are extracting from this beauty is fantastic.

Thank You mate, the car does throw some good FE numbers when driven properly and it is definitely very satisfying to see these figures in-spite of the known weight of this machine.

Originally Posted by puchoo

Good to read that mostly all your updates reflect an immense satisfaction with the car and ownership

Absolutely right, the apprehensions are all clear now, this machine is a wonderful companion & Iam very happy with my decision.

Originally Posted by arun_josie

Nice updates and pics there! I am sure, you will be already planning for the next long drive

Thanks mate, unfortunately no long drives in the vicinity . I would be shuttling between Hyderabad & Chennai for the next 8 weeks to take care of a requirement related to work, however my Dad would definitely have some fun as he possibly would be driving me to and fro from the airport (we have a good 40KM stretch one way for driving pleasure) during my every weekend hop's in the next 2 months.

Updated FE chart below after the last refill a couple of weeks back .



I have been experiencing a heavy left pull after my recent trip to Maharashtra (thanks to the roads), the wheels were misaligned. Upon suggestion from a fellow Linea owner Dr Naresh I took the car to Sai Wheels in Ayyapa Society on the 100ft road. The workshop is not trendy or very clean however I should admit that the owner (Yella Reddy) is a very knowledgeable person and he knows his job well.



Trial Run 1 : We went for a test drive to check the degree of the issue, On return they diagonally rotated the wheels as the first wheel rotation is advised at 5K and sadly I was not aware of the same. The odo of the car is now at 8K and so the wheel rotation and balancing was properly done,
3 of the 4 wheels took some weights as well. After the rotation & balancing the car went in for alignment and the necessary adjustments were made.

Balancing in progress



Rotation in progress



Alignment in Progress



Trial Run 2 : After the alignment we went for another drive, 95% of the issue was fixed however there was still a minor noticeable pull. We returned to the workshop after 10 min, a few small adjustments were made to the steering, the readings were rechecked and the technician went under the car again and returned after a few minutes.

Trial Run 3 : The issue was now 99% addressed, what we have observed was the car is perfectly fine when we are not accelerating however when we accelerate ( power transmits to the wheels through the drive shaft) there is a very minute pull, one needs to have a very keen eye to notice this. I did not notice this almost negligible pull however the technician took time to show me what is happening and only then I observed this very small variance. We took a good 10 min drive and the technician said that this should possible settle down after 2-3 days of run however if that is not happening he asked me to come over again so that he can recheck.

Adjustments done and ready to roll.



So I would now check how things go in the next couple of days. Overall I would say that the service I received today is very satisfactory as they took time & spent good effort to get the things right rather than just completing a formality and sending me off. An important point to note is that the workshop has been pretty busy all the time I was there and they were taking similar time for all the customers to ensure that the work is done properly.

As a testimony to the effort & good work these guys do I have seen at least 7 cars that were being serviced in the 1 hour 20 min I was there today, the 8th car pulled in just when I was about to roll out and it happened to be a Merc Benz C Class.



I had to adjust with a manual report with the necessary readings noted as the printer was not working,



What I liked about this place was they are taking time to give their best effort and also educating the customer on the issue (evident in my case) and not trying to con seal or close an issue with partial work done.

Overall Satisfaction - 9.5/10 ( The 0.5 point was deducted for the printer issue)
Would I recommend the place - Definitely Yes
Price : Rs 650 for all the work done.
Contact person : Mr Yella Reddy ( +91-9000943555)

Cheers,
pdma.

[ghodlur]

Originally Posted by pdma

Adjustments done and ready to roll.

Just one question. Are the camber and caster readings for your Linea within the required limits? Coz the final values are not to be seen in the alignment report. I have always found the camber/caster readings out of alignment in my Punto. As per FASS to adjust them the entire suspension set up has to be dropped down which might take more than a day to complete the job. Although I have not experienced any pull towards any side, a call for perfection is difficult to be taken.

[vijaycool]

Toe should be always negative for the front wheel drive. The reason for pulling left is low castor value in your left wheel than the right.

[pdma]

Originally Posted by ghodlur

Just one question. Are the camber and caster readings for your Linea within the required limits? .

Hello ghodlur,

From what I remember the readings were shown as green on the computer monitor however I admit that it was a definite miss on my side to make a note of the initial readings and honestly did not realise till you highlighted the same.

Originally Posted by vijaycool

Toe should be always negative for the front wheel drive. The reason for pulling left is low castor value in your left wheel than the right.

Hello vijay,

I did miss that mate, Iam planning to goto the workshop again tomorrow and I will update you all on the exact readings.

Cheers,
pdma.

[pdma]

I have been to the alignment center yesterday and I was informed that for FIAT only Toe reading can be adjusted as the Camber & Castor would remain fixed and can be altered only on lower arm replacement.
I am planning to take the car to AV motors today to get this small issue rectified as the car still pulls to left very marginally.

Cheers,
pdma.

[vijaycool]

Originally Posted by pdma

I have been to the alignment center yesterday and I was informed that for FIAT only Toe reading can be adjusted as the Camber & Castor would remain fixed and can be altered only on lower arm replacement.
I am planning to take the car to AV motors today to get this small issue rectified as the car still pulls to left very marginally.

Cheers,
pdma.

Incorrect castor will be due to worn out strut bushings. check everything is in order

[pdma]

Booked at appointment with AV Motors today to get the slight left pull issue addressed which was still persistent even after the alignment done a few weeks back as mentioned above. I promptly reached the service center at 1230 PM the agreed time and the SA - Sandeep attended immediately. The job card was prepared to address 2 issues 1) Left Pull 2) ECU update released by FIAT just a few days back to address the shudder which most of the owners reported in the 3rd gear (personally I did not experience this issue on a regular basis however I did notice it a few times, the reason possibly could be the way I shift the gears at lower rpm's).

Issue: Shudder/Jerk felt in Gear 3.

Approximately 15 min after the job card was prepared, the car was pulled into a bay and they started working on the ECU update. A computer was connected and the ECU was scanned and up came a message on the screen which read "Gear Jerking issue identified". A few more clicks followed and the system updated started which took about 5 more minutes. Post which another message was displayed which read "Programming terminated correctly".





Feedback post the update.

I drove the car for about 40 km post the update and tried to push the car across various rpm's however I did not experience any shudder/jerk which I occasionally saw earlier. May be people who experienced this issue at more frequent intervals can confirm their experience post the update on their machines.

The positive side.

Post the software update I did observe something very interesting, the drive-ability of the car seems to have improved. In simple words the turbo lag seems to have minimized and I did feel that the car was pulling fine in gear 3 where earlier I had to downshift to gear 2 and I observed the same behavior between gear 3 & 4.
No please do not expect any miracles as its the same 1.3 MJD and the ECU update would not do any wonders to make it sprint friendly or pull like a train at lower rpm's, however Iam sure you would observe a significant change in the drive-ability.

Additional Information.

From my conversation with the GM - Service at AV motors he mentioned that FIAT has issued a circular to have the S/W update done across all the 2014 90HP engines hence all the 2014 Linea's and 90 HP Punto's would receive this ECU update mostly when they come in for service. If somebody wants to get this addressed immediately please call any FASS for a quick appointment and you can get this done in flat 10-15 min, its free of cost & covered under warranty.

Issue: Car pulling towards the left side.

I took a brief test drive with a senior technician and he confirmed that he too observed the pull I was mentioning about. Post the test drive he explained me the various contributing factors for this issue and he checked the previous alignment reports too. He did mention a point which I felt is right where he said that the alignment machines at FASS are properly calibrated as per the guidelines from FIAT which might not the case with the alignment centers outside with a very few exceptions. They removed the wheels checked some settings, then got the wheels back and moved the car into the alinement bay. The computer guided the technician to pull forward or backward and based on the inputs it threw in some readings which were adjusted accordingly. Post which the steering was checked and some minor adjustments were made too.





Feedback post the alignment.

I personally took a long test drive across 4 different roads and the car did stick to straight lines on 3 of them however pulled left on one. For this I was made to recall the briefing I received on factors that can influence a car's path and one of which being the banking of the road. So in this case the road seems to be more inclined towards the left and hence the car rolled more towards the left. As the car behaved as expected on 3 other roads I bought this reason from the technician however somewhere I was apprehensive about it and I should admit that I was not 100% convinced.
Post the delivery of the car as mentioned above I drove for about 40KM and I tried out on multiple occasions to see how the car behaved and Iam happy to report that the car is now sticking to a straight line. The longest duration I tested it was on the Yousfguda flyover where I got a long empty stretch from the time I went up the flyover till I came down and all my doubts where put to rest when the car behaved absolutely fine.

As a good gesture the car received a complimentary foam wash before it was handled over to me.



Overall Iam happy with the way AV Motors attended my car and addressed the issues. On the other side I did feel that the alignment done earlier at SAI wheels as mentioned in my previous posts addressed the left pulling issue to a large extent however not 100%. After the fix at AV motors Iam convinced that the equipment at FASS is definitely better than what we may have in the market may be with some exceptions, for eg: Madhu's @ Bangalore as I know many FIAT owners vouch by their service.
However I had a had short conversations with a couple of Linea owners and they said that mostly this issue would reoccur after sometime so lets see.
I would provide more feedback after a few hundred's on the ODO.



Invoice Details



Cheers,
pdma.

[pdma]

Its been long that I have updated the thread. The car was parked for most of July due to my unavailability. In this post I would only be capturing the recent refill & some fancy odo meter readings displayed recently.

8999 Mark



9000 Mark (5 Months 20 days).



Recent FE Stats





Updated FE Chart



Cheers,
pdma.

[pdma]

10,000 KM - 6 Months (approx)

The car urges you to drive more and the odo just doesn't stop clicking.

01-Sep-2015





Iam loving it. The car has been running as expected and not even a squeak or unwanted sound anywhere in the cabin. The magic carpet ride quality definitely makes you happy after every trip. The car does feel smoother after the EUC update, also the drive ability has improved considerably. The turbo lag in gear 2 and 3 has come down and pottering in traffic is much better. The clutch as I mentioned earlier as well is butter smooth and doesn't stress you out in heavy traffic.

Issues noticed so far.

1) Rear seat belt clip not functioning - Addressed by Ankitha Motors free of cost.
2) Drain cap not fixed properly for the wiper washer fluid compartment - Addressed by Ankitha Motors free of cost.
3) 3rd Gear Jerk - Addressed by Av Motors via ECU update free of cost.
4) Left Pull - Addressed by AV Motors via wheel alignment - Rs 545 (complimentary body wash and interior vacuum).

First Free Service - 5000 KM done at Butta Auto - Rs 2500/-

Note: FIAT does not recommend any oil & filer changes during the first free service @ 5000KM, however I got it done in personal interest.

Accessories: The only accessories added to the car are the much needed window shades - Rs 2500 (I paid Rs 1000/- more as I have seen that people have ordered them online for around Rs 1500/-).

Fuel Efficiency - The car is definitely is not bad on on the "Kitna dethi hai" aspect as well, as I see the overall FE hovering around 17 kmpl till date.
It was also observed that FE has slightly improved post the ECU update.





Cost per km is gradually coming down (thanks to the fuel price drop as well)



Thumbs Down

1) No direct Folder changing option on the ICE, one has to take a loooong path via Blue & Me for a simple folder change. This is very irritating.

2) Plastic part on the windshield has dis colored and looks too odd, it needs a constant polishing to keep it looking better.



After polish



What could be better

Plastic handles on the door trims could have been better.

Thumbs Up

1) Seats are super comfy and the thickness & cushioning is way ahead of some of the competition
2) The suspension is just amazing and every time I pass a pot hole the glide feeling puts a big smile on my face.
3) The full heavy metal protection plate under the engine compartment definitely saved the car from a few damages.
4) The ABS kicks in late giving you the needed comfort level for breaking.

Tyres:

Stock Good Year are holding good so far. They were tested in various speeds, in some wet conditions as well and I did not find them bad at all (or may be I still haven't tasted something which is know as better)
Notice the small rubber spikes that are still intact in most of the places even after 10k Kms.



I love keeping my car stock and spotless. Flaunting the pics of the stock beige fabric seats and interiors of the car.











FIAT has introduced me to many fellow FIAT owners who are very active and interact constantly via various means. Yes, the limited number of cars & further limited active owners on forums makes this very easy .



Pics from a recent FIAT gathering @ Vikarabad - 80 KM from Hyderabad.





At the start of this thread, I mentioned that I have invested the money I saved by picking up a Linea (against the sales champion in this segment) coupled with additional savings. Below is the picture of the car standing on the investment.



Overall Iam happy with the decision I made (doesn't it matter the most) and I will keep you updated moving forward as well.



Cheers,
pdma.

[nikhil0405]

Hi pdma,

Been following your thread for a while. I like your reasoning for the purchase.
I too have booked Linea mjd emotion in magnesio grey color. Delivery expected tomorrow. Will be glued to this thread for your experiences.