[lovesujay]

Originally Posted by ksanjeev30

Hi Everybody,
Going to get delivery of my Sea Gary 1.5P Trend by this weekend, I am very excited. I had booked it in first week of July 2013.
Can anybody help me to decode the VIN?, which I received from dealer. VIN is MAJAXXMRKAEL17134. Thanks in advance.

It's manufactured in January 2014. It's a new car so don't worry, friend

[raz0r]

Update:

After a lot of fight with the dealer (Riddhi Ford, New Delhi), got the VIN number MAJAXXMRKADD84824

and I am surprised they are giving me a car manufactured in November 2013.

Should I be concerned ?

[roy_libran]

Originally Posted by raz0r

Update:

After a lot of fight with the dealer (Riddhi Ford, New Delhi), got the VIN number MAJAXXMRKADD84824

and I am surprised they are giving me a car manufactured in November 2013.

Should I be concerned ?

Yes, you should be!
Why on Earth are you being allocated a car from November last year when no one has any standing stock anywhere. It is not as if Dealers have cars waiting in their yards, when it comes to Ecosport.
Of course there can always be an entirely innocent reason like a logistical issue with that particular piece earlier, that led to it being made available for delivery so late.
But, there can be number of more concerning explanations.

Ask Ford directly.

[raz0r]

Talked to ford directly and they said that the EcoSport Automatic is a low production car and may be it is dispatched late and hence the issue and I don't need to worry about it.

I am not convinced with the reason they gave.

[ecosport rules]

Originally Posted by raz0r

Update:
After a lot of fight with the dealer (Riddhi Ford, New Delhi), got the VIN number MAJAXXMRKADD84824.Should I be concerned ?

Originally Posted by raz0r

Talked to ford directly and they said that the EcoSport Automatic is a low production car and may be it is dispatched late and hence the issue and I don't need to worry about it.I am not convinced with the reason they gave.

This is my personal take on this issue:

Lot of people are really struggling to get deliveries so when you are getting a car just take it.
Why should you be bothered if it is 2 months old?
Just do a through PDI and take the delivery.

My car was delivered on June 26th, 2013 but it was manufactured in February 2013(4months old).
I have no problems till date.

Hope it helps you to arrive at a decision.

[pc1686]

Originally Posted by ecosport rules

If you are looking for just changing stock bulbs, I would suggest Hella powerlight which is much better than Philips extreme vision.

I am so sure because I had the opportunity to compare Hella powerlight,Philips extreme and Osram night breakers.

Hi ecosport rules,

Today I spent a lot of time on JC road hunting for this Hella powerlight. But the closest I reached was this: "Hella White day light, H-4 12V 60/55W 4400K Performance" The MRP was Rs. 825 for a pair. Most of the shopkeepers said that 60/55W is not coming but they had higher wattage bulbs.

Is it the same? I so wish, it is

[ecosport rules]

Originally Posted by pc1686

Hi ecosport rules,

Today I spent a lot of time on JC road hunting for this Hella powerlight. But the closest I reached was this: "Hella White day light, H-4 12V 60/55W 4400K Performance" The MRP was Rs. 825 for a pair. Most of the shopkeepers said that 60/55W is not coming but they had higher wattage bulbs.

Is it the same? I so wish, it is

Hello Pc1686,

Can you post a picture of the same.I can recognise it for you

Higher wattage is not advisable as it will damage your combination switch if you donot use a cut out.
It will also void warranty.

[pc1686]

Originally Posted by ecosport rules

Hello Pc1686,

Can you post a picture of the same.I can recognise it for you

Higher wattage is not advisable as it will damage your combination switch if you donot use a cut out.
It will also void warranty.

Here are the pics, thanks
I am not able to upload the pics as I am getting an error message. I have attached the zip file.

[Vid6639]

Originally Posted by pc1686

Here are the pics, thanks
I am not able to upload the pics as I am getting an error message. I have attached the zip file.

Don't even go near those lights. They are meant only for show. Light output is severely compromised just to get bluish white colour. Notice the blue coating on the bulb.

I would look for the Osram Nightbreaker unlimited instead of searching for the rare Hella's.

[ecosport rules]

Originally Posted by pc1686

I am not able to upload the pics as I am getting an error message. I have attached the zip file.

with Vid6639, blue coated lights are only show lights.

I would prefer Hella power light any day(10 to 20 percent better than the other two) but you could go for Philips extreme vision or Osram night breaker too.

Final choice is yours, you are the boss.

[hemmmer]

Day before yesterday I went through a rough experience which I thought should share with you all.

I drove to office in morning. Music was playing and fan was running. Got a little late so had to choose a tight parking slot. After parking, I was not sure about the clearance between my car and others. So turned the ignition on to start the vehicle. But then I thought, better get outside and make sure about the space (you know the visibility from inside). I got out and checked. Found the position to be alright.

Just when I would have went back to get the keys, one of my colleague came and we started chatting while walking towards the office. I forgot about the keys...

In the evening, when I got near my parking slot, I searched for my key to unlock the car (mine is second gen Titanium without the key-less entry/ push-button start). Off course I couldn't find them. My car was already unlocked. I got inside and turned the key to off position (too late for that for sure). I prayed in vain knowing well what will happen next. I turned the key to ON position and dashboard remained dark. I tried to crank the engine but car didn't even make an effort to start the engine. Obviously, battery had run out of charge completely.

I called up my colleague (same one who made me forgot the keys in the morning - justice prevailed) and asked him to help me out. We called the road-side assistance and asked for help. Guy attending the call arranged some support and help will arrive shortly.

After that we evaluated our options. In worst case, I could leave the car in parking for the night or I could try to jump start the car. I asked for help from Company drivers and fortunately they had a jump-start cable. My friend keeps a Diesel Vento. He brought the car near mine. We opened the hood and carried out following steps in the sequence:

1. I made sure that ignition is in off position in my car.
2. We connected the positive terminal of good battery to positive terminal of bad battery. Positive terminal of battery in Ecosport is covered by a Red flap cover (refer picture).
3. We connected the negative terminal of good battery to negative terminal of bad battery. Negative terminal of battery in Ecosport is on the right hand side of ECU (refer picture).
4. I got inside the car and turned the key to "ON" position. Dashboard came to life with all usual indicators and MID lighting up.
5. I cranked the engine and engine came to life without any fuss.

But just after that, I saw a "ABS failure" message on MID which was quickly replaced by "ABS now working fine" message. I decided to ignore it hoping for the best. But then my friend pointed out that both my DRLs and one of main headlight is ON. I checked the headlight switch, it was in off position. I tried other positions (parking lights, full ON, full OFF). Nothing changed. What was ON, was not turning OFF. What was OFF, was not turning ON. Basically, no effect of headlight switch. I tried to turn on the fog lamp but they also didn't turn on.

I was getting nervous. I was cursing myself; Why the hell didn't I wait for assistance to arrive? I had recently spent a fortune to install "The Great Ecosport Headlights + DRLs" and I was afraid that I had somehow damaged it. My friend's comments were not helping either, he was saying "may be I smelled something the moment you started your car".

I immediately called Mr Srinivas Gopal from whom I had bought the headlights. He asked a series of question to make sense of gibberish I was saying. I said perhaps I had blown the headlamp but he appeared confident that was not the case. He advised me to remove the headlight fuse to turn them off helping the battery to charge better. He also sent couple of photos to help me locate the fuse. I did that and headlamps turned off. He advised to leave the engine running for about half an hour to charge the battery.

After some 15-20 minutes, Mr Gopal called me back. He said he had talked to ford service engineers as some of them are his friends. He gave me following information:

Starting the engine when battery is completely out of charge may cause the ECU to malfunction. Since ECU is the brain of car, not giving enough juice to ECU may result in many things going wrong. If the battery is completely flat, it is advisable to just remove the battery and get it charged externally. Jump starting the car should be avoided. Needless to say, ECU is a very expensive component of car.

Now the first thing to try in this situation is giving the car a start cycle (turn the ignition off and turn the engine back on). It might put things back on track. If that doesn't work, next thing to try is resetting the ECU. It can be done by removing the earth cable from negative terminal of battery (refer attached photo). Keep it disconnected for about 5 minutes and reconnect it. Take care that cable doesn't touch anything else during that time. Also, there might be small spark while connecting and disconnecting the cable which can be safely ignored. Resetting the ECU means all MID setting (Base, Treble, Sync preferences) are lost. It also means the power window auto up-down feature is disabled. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed to turn it back on.

By this time, about half an hour was passed. So Mr Gopal advised me to try a engine restart. I turned the ignition off, prayed for the best and started the engine. I checked MID and various indicator on dashboard. To my relief, no malfunction message/indicator appeared. DRLs and fog lamps were also turning ON and OFF correctly using the headlamp switch. I switched off the engine, reinserted the headlamp fuse. Started the engine and checked the headlamps. My beautiful headlamps were working fine and so was the headlamp switch. I checked the power window up-down feature. No issues with that either.

I called Mr Gopal and informed him that everything is working fine now. But he was not satisfied yet. He asked me to do a test ride of about 15-20 km to check all functions (high beam, music system, engine response etc). That would also charge the battery better because of higher RPMs than just idling. I did just that and found everything was in order. Just when I was about to finish my test drive, I got a call from Ford road-side assistance saying the support person has arrived (after 2 hours). I went back to office hoping to get the car checked from a professional. I explained everything to him. He replied that they are getting many reports of Ecosport losing charge completely. So they just use the jump cable to start the car. I asked about the possible ECU problems but he was unaware of that. Since my car was already running, he didn't have much interest doing anything (he didn't even open the hood or checked anything). When I insisted on ECU malfunctioning, he said I should just go to dealership tomorrow. They will fix the problem with a computer. I realized it was of no use talking further to the guy and let him go.

Found no issues after that. I have to go on a highway trip this weekend which should charge the battery fully. A big thanks to Mr Srinivas Gopal who provided me better road-side assistance than Ford's official support.

[aquarian1502]

Took Delivery of Ecosport 1.5 TDCI Titanium (Sea Grey) last week . Here are some pics. Will upload some more with the leather seats that she got dressed in from Karlsson.

[arunphilip]

Originally Posted by hemmmer

1. We connected the positive terminal of good battery to positive terminal of bad battery. Positive terminal of battery in Ecosport is covered by a Red flap cover (refer picture).
2. We connected the negative terminal of good battery to negative terminal of bad battery. Negative terminal of battery in Ecosport is on the right hand side of ECU (refer picture).

Thank you for sharing your experience with us, and glad you got through it without any lasting or expensive damage. Can you check and confirm whether you need to perform a deep-cycle charge of the battery to get it back to spec?

Also, I believe you should connect the positive terminals of both the batteries (as you rightly did), but connect the negative of the good battery to the chassis of the dead car (and not to your dead battery's negative terminal).

[hemmmer]

Originally Posted by arunphilip

Thank you for sharing your experience with us, and glad you got through it without any lasting or expensive damage. Can you check and confirm whether you need to perform a deep-cycle charge of the battery to get it back to spec?

I will call the dealership and ask whether I should still go for explicit charging of battery. I presumed a 700km highway trip should bring it up to the spec. No?

Originally Posted by arunphilip

Also, I believe you should connect the positive terminals of both the batteries (as you rightly did), but connect the negative of the good battery to the chassis of the dead car (and not to your dead battery's negative terminal).

Yes you are right. I read the manual after the incident and it does say connecting the negative terminal of good battery to the ground connection of vehicle with bad battery. What I am not sure about is, the terminal where I connected to, is actually the ground connection? Surely the real negative terminal of battery is entirely covered by ECU.

[pc1686]

Originally Posted by Vid6639

Don't even go near those lights. They are meant only for show. Light output is severely compromised just to get bluish white colour. Notice the blue coating on the bulb.

I would look for the Osram Nightbreaker unlimited instead of searching for the rare Hella's.

Hi Vid6639,

Thanks for the comment. I am again going to the market to buy mats etc., will get Osram today if I am not able to get hold of Hella.
In the meantime, I need your opinion on this:
http://www.amazon.com/HELLA-HLA-H831...productDetails

Thanks.

Originally Posted by ecosport rules

with Vid6639, blue coated lights are only show lights.

I would prefer Hella power light any day(10 to 20 percent better than the other two) but you could go for Philips extreme vision or Osram night breaker too.

Final choice is yours, you are the boss.

Hi ecosport rules,

Can you please also recognize this one? Is it the same as power light? http://www.amazon.com/HELLA-HLA-H831...productDetails

Thanks for all the help