[ashishk29]

Duckdoc, that is incredibly encouraging to read! Thank you for your thorough write-up, sparing no details.

I am glad you have found a solid workhorse. At just a third of your total mileage, I am in the same boat. Loving the experience so far.

One emotion I very whole-heartedly resonate with it just how refined this car is for a diesel!

[Raghu M]

Originally Posted by Goandiaries

This is such a late reply, but still I thought I'll post it. I too have similar issue, which I have mentioned in my review here (My Mahindra XUV300 Diesel | Long-term Ownership Review | 3 years and 60,000 km). In fact, that is on the top of my list of issues with my car that I noted. I have not shown it to many technicians, but to whoever I have shown they say everything is fine!

Sir, indeed a late reply. I have gone to the showroom and got it rectified. It's the link rod issue that is common with all the 3OOs. It was a 2 hour affair actually, the technician did not even take it for a test ride, we were able to find the issue while it was parked, just move the steering slowly to either sides and you will hear the noise. The bill came to 1142, please find out if the service center has stock and then proceed with the repairs. No issues since the last 2 months, it's been a pleasure.

[krishnakumar]

Originally Posted by Raghu M

It's the link rod issue that is common with all the 3OOs.

Originally Posted by Goandiaries

I too have similar issue, which I have mentioned in my review. I have not shown it to many technicians, but to whoever I have shown they say everything is fine!

Just to reconfirm, is this issue pertaining to the car losing stability when riding over a few rumble strips? The car immediately sways if we hit the rumble strips as decent speeds and is a bit unnerving. I have particularly noticed this to be the car when taking the rumble strip on a curve.

I had reported this in my review as well (Link (Ownership review of my first car, Yoda | Mahindra XUV300 W8(O) D MT | EDIT: 20,000 km update)) but passed it off as a quirk of the car. Is this something that I should check out, my 30K service is due anyway. Quoting from my earlier post below for easy reference:

Oversteer on rumble strips: Realized this is more a function of the suspension setup. Basically, if I steer while on the rumble strips coupled with braking or acceleration, there is a terrible oversteer that needs immediate correction. Having driven cars for many years, I have been confident in tackling those scenarios well but this might catch an amateur off-guard! Not sure if there is a fix to this though. Typically, I do trail braking on sharper corners as it is much more matured way of driving/riding (certainly carried over this habit from my riding days). So while I would normally trail brake on these sharper curves, if I see rumble strips on one I slow down much earlier and hold the steering a bit loose to quickly adjust for any corrections that might be required. So far this has been working well!

Originally Posted by Duckdoc

90000 km in 3 years and 2 months with a XUV 300 W8(O) Diesel MT: a short midterm ownership review of the last 14 months of ownership

Duckdoc! As always, amazing report. You raise the bar for using this fabulous the car as it should be!

[Duckdoc]

Originally Posted by krishnakumar

Duckdoc! As always, amazing report. You raise the bar for using this fabulous the car as it should be!

Thanks @krishnakumar for your kind words. Thanks to you, I noticed the rear wiper issue but willing to live with it.
I have noticed a perceptible shift of the rear at rumble strips though not losing control. Are we talking about the same thing here. I am wary of rumblers at curves, though.

[krishnakumar]

Originally Posted by Duckdoc

I have noticed a perceptible shift of the rear at rumble strips though not losing control. Are we talking about the same thing here. I am wary of rumblers at curves, though.

I believe so! It is like an oversteer where the rear end steps out when riding over rumble strips on a curve at a speed of 50km etc. No change in behaviour while going straight.

This has been there since beginning and I have since then been extra careful on rumble strips. I raised this for my 30k service today. They said it’s the behaviour of all CSUVs, not sure about that though.

They also said there is no recall for my VIN for front suspension link rod.

Is this the same experience for you or is it different?

[Duckdoc]

I had also assumed it to be normal behaviour in a CSUV, having been a sedan user earlier. As there was no loss of control didn't check with the ASC about the suspension link rod.

It however raises 2 questions:
1. Have those who had changed the link rod found a difference.
2. What is the behaviour of the 3XO, with a higher CG, over rumble strips.
.

[Goandiaries]

Originally Posted by krishnakumar

Just to reconfirm, is this issue pertaining to the car losing stability when riding over a few rumble strips? The car immediately sways if we hit the rumble strips as decent speeds and is a bit unnerving. I have particularly noticed this to be the car when taking the rumble strip on a curve.

In my case, not only the car behaves so on slightly thicker rumble strips, but also makes noise on slower speeds in minor potholes.

Originally Posted by Duckdoc

The rear brake pads were replaced at 76000 km, though the front pads were fine then.

The front brake pads were replaced only at the 90000 km servicing.

Great review Duckdoc! It is nice to see your XUV300 munching miles without any troubles. Also, yours is another testament to show how these brake pads can last when you drive the car appropriately. In my case however, the rear pads are going strong with more than 50% pads left at 76k km. The front pads are having about 30 - 35% left. I've heard the service guys saying that usually they last about 20k km!

[harikrishnansp]

Originally Posted by Duckdoc

The most improved state appears to be Kerala with excellent roads and with the exception of the buses and autorickshaws,people drive with sense and with predictability. Being single lane in most places, there are instances of aggressive overtaking, though it was interesting to see the difference in aggressiveness between Kottayam and Tiruvalla though so close to each other. However, coming from the most lawless traffic wise city in TN it was a nothing burger. I also feel that some in this forum are unduly harsh on Kerala. It was also good to see strategically placed mirrors on blind corners In fact, TN where one takes for granted good roads even in the interior serves up noticeably bad roads near the border with Kerala in the south and middle. Toilets in the fuel stations (non Shell) are the cleanest I've seen with TN a distant second.

Surprisingly, Kerala was the last of the states I had driven to, but ended up going there 4 times since the Christmas holidays last year.

The well mannered drivers in Kerala are also partly due to proper enforcement of rules in the road. The driving culture was good to begin with (with a few wayward drivers here and there). Also, lately there have been a lot of efforts in improving the driving culture on the road through awareness initiatives and introduction of AI powered cameras, which has rubbed well with people who are willing to adapt (and also created uproar from people who think the roads are their inherited property, but that kind will be there everywhere).

One of the main roads over here, the Main Central road is a delight to drive although it is a two lane. It was known to be dangerous with a lot of accidents earlier (still is to some extent mainly because a minority of people and buses don't follow the rules properly), it has improved a lot now with proper markings and camera based speed violation enforcement. Once the ongoing 4 laning of NH66 in Kerala is completed the drives will be much better. They are also planning a Greenfield highway running parallel to the MC road.

Although the real charm lies in the beautiful hilly roads in Idukki, Wagamon and Munnar. They get battered every rainy season but are patched up really well and quickly.

[anantpoddar]

Great review Duckdoc! Glad to see you are thoroughly enjoying the vehicle as it is meant to be!

The diesel engine is truly on another level of refinement.

Originally Posted by krishnakumar

I believe so! It is like an oversteer where the rear end steps out when riding over rumble strips on a curve at a speed of 50km etc. No change in behaviour while going straight.

This has been there since beginning and I have since then been extra careful on rumble strips. I raised this for my 30k service today. They said it’s the behaviour of all CSUVs, not sure about that though.

They also said there is no recall for my VIN for front suspension link rod.

Is this the same experience for you or is it different?

There used to be a rumble strip on a curve on my way to work. Didn't face any issue for the first 20-30k kms. However, after around 30k kms, faced the sideways movement of the rear on those rumble strips twice or thrice. So I don't think this is normal behavior as it was not present in the new vehicle.
Couldn't replicate the same so didn't bother much. Started being extra slow on such rumble strips around a curve.

If your link rods are not completely damaged, please don't ask Mahindra to replace them. The earlier batches of link rods from 2019 to 2021 were perfectly fine. It is the new ones that have been cheapened out for cost cutting.
The new link rods (since 2022 or something) are completely worthless and Mahindra knows this problem. I've had to replace my link rods 3-4 times in the last 18k kms since mid 2022. The earlier ones that came with the vehicle ran perfectly fine for 58k kms.
Mahindra ruined a perfectly engineered component for the sake of cost cutting.

[ashishk29]

A mini travelogue highlighting just how much I've enjoyed this car:

Recently did a Pune-Tipeshwar-Tadoba-Pune run with a few work friends. 4 of us, all geared up, car filled to the brim, we were ready to roll at 5:30AM.

Travel plan:
We chose to go via the Ahmednagar-Aurangabad route while going to save some distance. The Pune-Aurangabad part of the route was pretty routine. Having done this route many times before, nothing new here.
But then came the big deal: Samrudhhi expressway. I had been itching to try it out ever since it was announced, and finally I had the chance.

Samrudhhi experience Pune-Tipeshwar
To start off, I gradually reached an indicated 120kmph, and set the cruise control at around 115kmph. Within 5 minutes, there was not a shred of awareness in the cabin that we were doing triple digit speeds flat. The car just complies. Very little engine noise, as the car was doing that speed just above 2000RPM. Right at the cusp of the torque band.

The run was smooth. Went on for a bit till I hit the low fuel indicator. I had gotten about 17kmpl at 115kmph, with 4 on board, boot filled to the brim, and AC on blast. I'm more than happy with this figure.

Post that I wanted to try out going a bit further with this. So I gradually reached 115, but pushed on. I won't quote my actual speed figure, but I was quite baffled with just how far the car would let me push. And deeply impressed and content at just how incredibly stable to car felt even at those speeds. The firm suspension, the wide track tyres, the relatively heavy weight, and the long wheelbase, all doing their part to keep it going straight as an arrow.

Samrudhhi passes through several forest areas, and they have erected tall border walls at all bridges. However, those are hardly sufficient to keep Langurs at bay. I had to dodge 2 langurs who hopped on the expressway, while I was doing 115kmph. Not a fun experience, let me tell you.

All this time, I was keeping an eye on the tyre temps in the tiretronics menu. I had inflated them at about 33psi before starting. A psi below the recommended 34. And the tyres were already doing about 36psi, and had reached a peak of 61 degrees C. However, curiously, it was the rear tyres reporting higher temperatures and pressure than the front. No reason for that. But I kept on going since none of the readings were alarming.

Eventually it was time to exit Samrudhhi and head on to Tipeshwar. That route was less than decent. There were vast patches of road just half way through construction. In some places only one side was concrete and the other side was... well.. non-existent. In some places the concrete patches ended abruptly. It was annoying to say the least.

What the tyre?
At tipeshwar I sat down and started an experiment the next day, after our morning safari. I started manually deflating the tyres a bit, and to my surprise, the tiretronics menu was reporting them in the wrong location!

I knew exactly what the reason was. The geniuses at Mahindra SVC had done a tyre rotation, but skipped re-training the TPMS system. So the TPMS was reporting them at their older locations. That's why it displayed rear tyres getting hot! Because they were in fact now the front tyres.

I looked up a youtube video to trigger the TPMS learning mode. And to my frustration, it would enter the training mode, but wouldn't actually start the one-by-one tyre learning. I wondered if the tyre pressure was an issue. I called my service centre guy and he said they had to be inflated to 40psi. I was FURIOUS. I gave him an earful as to how I had to do all this process in 43 degree Nagpur heat, in the middle of nowhere, because these bums were too lazy/negligent to do it. I pumped up the tyres to 40. Glad my tyre inflator came to the rescue. Rinse and repeat. And the damn thing STILL won't start the individual tyre learning. At that point I just gave up. Inflated all the tyres to 34 and was done with it.

Tipeshwar to Tadoba transfer was also about as much fun as the road till Tipeshwar had been. Entire lengths of road just left half way through construction. There was even a road laying machine just sitting there, literally rusting. Meaning this work had been abandoned for months now.

The return journey:
After our Tadoba safaris, it was time to head back. This run was going to be interesting, since we had a morning safari the day of our return journey. So we could start our return journey only around 10:30AM at the earliest.

We did just that, and started off. The target was to join Samrudhhi at Wardha. We had lunch at Wardha, and joined Samrudhhi. This time, it was a bit of a race against the clock. So cruise was set at GPS 120kmph, rather than speedo indicated. Meaning we would have to suffer the beep from time to time. We dropped off one of the guys at Mehkar since he had other plans, and from there the journey resumed.

After that point, I again decided to reclaim some of the time lost, and went ahead with fully depressing the accelerator pedal. I wanted to see just how far I could go. Again, I won't self-incriminate by posting my actual speed, but lets just say that there was nearly no speedometer left by the time I lifted my foot off the pedal. This was hardly for 5-10 seconds. I had no intention of keeping that velocity. And again, thoroughly, thoroughly impressed with the high speed stability. Even rocks wouldn't be this steadfastly grounded.

Rest of the journey was at 120kmph GPS indicated. No deviations. We ended up having to refuel just past Aurangabad, after having refueled at Wardha! Suffice to say I ran through a good 30L in the blink of an eye.

We were greeted by moderate showers on the way. Nothing too crazy. But that made for amazing views. We exited Samrudhhi at Sinnar, and then jumped on to the Nashik-Pune highway. That highway is also in pretty good shape, with the exception of mountain sized speed-breakers at intersections

This part of the journey was with cruise control set to 85kmph. 90 being the limit. This patch was incredibly economical. We encountered heavy rains past alephata or so. At least twice a passing vehicle splashed water all over my windshield. leading to a brief moment of panic each time. But the rest was uneventful.

We finally reached Pune at around 9:30PM. So we managed to do both the major chunks of the trip in around 11hours each. Not bad for a ~800km run!

Parting thoughts:
Overall, this trip gave me a very new level of confidence on the vehicle dynamics, and the engine capability. I used up about 90L of fuel on the entire trip, leading us to a total of around 8k spent on fuel. At 2k per head, that's peanuts for the amount of travel!

Finally, here are some pics. Would be unfair to post about Tadoba and not post the big kitties

[Duckdoc]

Originally Posted by ashishk29

A mini travelogue highlighting just how much I've enjoyed this car:

Looks like you had some fun. Nice pics also. It's on these long trips it comes into its own. Wishing you many more trips.

Originally Posted by anantpoddar

Great review Duckdoc! Glad to see you are thoroughly enjoying the vehicle as it is meant to be!

The diesel engine is truly on another level of refinement.

If your link rods are not completely damaged, please don't ask Mahindra to replace them. The earlier batches of link rods from 2019 to 2021 were perfectly fine. It is the new ones that have been cheapened out for cost cutting.
The new link rods (since 2022 or something) are completely worthless and Mahindra knows this problem. I've had to replace my link rods 3-4 times in the last 18k kms since mid 2022. The earlier ones that came with the vehicle ran perfectly fine for 58k kms.
Mahindra ruined a perfectly engineered component for the sake of cost cutting.

Thanks for your kind words and for the heads up. I read somewhere, probably on the 700 thread that the original link rod costs much more than the new one at 700 INR and so as expected fails.

[ashishk29]

Originally Posted by krishnakumar

I believe so! It is like an oversteer where the rear end steps out when riding over rumble strips on a curve at a speed of 50km etc. No change in behaviour while going straight.

Originally Posted by Duckdoc

I have noticed a perceptible shift of the rear at rumble strips though not losing control. Are we talking about the same thing here. I am wary of rumblers at curves, though.

Originally Posted by krishnakumar

Just to reconfirm, is this issue pertaining to the car losing stability when riding over a few rumble strips? The car immediately sways if we hit the rumble strips as decent speeds and is a bit unnerving. I have particularly noticed this to be the car when taking the rumble strip on a curve.

I firmly believe that this oversteer/loss of control thing is not an issue with the car, but more so about how cars behave.

I have found this thread where multiple people are reporting the same issue. Their cars range from Altroz to Polo to WR-V.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CarsIndia/c...ing_on_rumble/
https://www.reddit.com/r/hyderabad/c...mment/jj9z48u/

I feel it is a function of stiff suspension, change in traction levels, and us ignoring their intended purpose i.e. to slow down incoming vehicles. On any normal speed-breaker we typically slow down to about 15-20kmph (at least I do). At those speeds, the car does not crab at all. We are not supposed to hit these strips at decent speeds by design anyway.

Ever since I mentally mapped my driving behaviour over rumble strips to what I'd do if there were a regular 2-3 inch speed breaker there, I have not felt this oversteer recur.

I recommend we start taking rumble strips for what they really are: Speed breakers.

[ashishk29]

Experienced my first "niggle" as such with the 300.

The other day I was sitting in my car, and I accidentally ended up bumping the key fob onto the steering while, thereby hitting the "lock" button. And with unfortunate timing I ended up pressing the start/stop button at the same time

This led to the main infotainment display going totally blank. It just wouldn't power on. Tried restarting the car a couple of times to no avail. The MID and console were working just fine.

Ended up taking the car to the service center. Technician pulled out a couple of fuses, and reseated them. And that seems to have done the trick. It started working.

Interesting little tidbit, the time in the MID also goes blank when this happens. Meaning the time is still being maintained by the infotainment, and not whatever controller is running the MID.

[bugs123]

I had the same issue with a brand new 2023 XUV 300, just after 3 months from date of purchase. Without even driving the car I could reproduce the issue just by turning the steering wheel. I went to the service centre and they immediately diagnosed it as they already knew the cause. All they did was replacing the linkages in warranty and I was all sorted.

[KVsidewinder]

Hi all, I have a 2021 bought w4. For the last one year I have been hearing a mild 'damped' clunky sound appearing to come from front passenger side. Once I had shown it to A.S.S. where they verified all fasteners of front suspension system and found ok. Now I am thinking of again showing them this issue. Has anyone here faced similar sound and diagnosed this issue. Thankyou in advance.