Re: Mahindra Thar : Official Review At the outset my apologies for the super delayed update.
Cutting the long story short after my booking as an early bird-dealer causing fiasco-shifted Expected Delivery date-my twitter & Telephonic war with dealer & Mahindra officials I finally got my LX Diesel Hard Top Copper delivered as an new year gift to self on 01 JAN 2021. It was a swift and nice affair at the dealership with a small puja organised by them. In Spite of the problem at the dealership end the way they handled it and arranged to get me a vehicle with a marginal delay of 10 days is appreciable. My initial promised delivery was on 15 December 2020 and my vehicle was billed and registered on 24 December 2020 though I took physical delivery on 01 Jan 2021.
Now coming to the vehicle as has been told by all previous owner it was super smooth-refined-better handling & light years ahead in all aspects of creature comfort etc and it was indeed so. Having driven small hatches to buses-heavy trucks & everything inbetween I was comfortable hustling the baby around right from the word go & enjoyed the first 800 odd kms trouble free & then Mr. Murphy struck his magic.
At 800 kms I booked for 1st service with my dealer (160 kms away from my home) and started from at 6 am to reach by 9 am do the service & start my journey from Bhubaneswar to Jammu the very next day. But just about 60 kms from home vehicle went into limp mode and didn't accelerate past 60kmph. No warning light on- Nothing. Checked error codes - No Code. Super frustrated called up the service advisor & he as expected requested to get the vehicle to workshop for diagnostic & repair. So poor me did last 100 dd kms at 60 kmph like a super law abiding citizen FRUSTRATING all other highway users all the way & reached the workshop.
Now the agony deepens further. On connecting the diagnostic computer it shows no fault and no recorded error codes. So they decide to do a manual DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) & check and starts idling the jeep but even after 30 odd minutes couldn't achieve the conditions to start the process. (Engine Coolant temp got settled at about 60 degree centigrade which requires to be at 80 odd degrees for the ECU to permit start the DPF Regeneration).
So after multiple failed attempt they raise the issue to the regional technical team at Kolkata and quickly it got escalated to the factory team at Nasik Plant. The service advisor used to take reading and send it to the plant team and after 2-3 hours plant team used to direct what to do , again take readings and send for further diagnosis. After 2 frustrating das they zeroed on to a faulty COOLANT TEMP SENSOR ![Frustration](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/images/smilies/Frustration.gif) costing mere Rs.356/- and ten minute repair job. It was changed on 3rd day and took a 100 km test drive followed by readout of soot deposit value in the DPF & all was normal. So my 6 hr 1st service got extended to 3 days agony but was happy that it was handled swiftly and with alacrity with a promise to be the vehicle absolutely fault free for my onward journey of 2500 kms.
Now on some retrospect I remembered noticing the temperature gauge at about 1/4th bar on the console where as most of my other vehicles it stays somewhere at1/3 or half bar and had thought good heat management. Where as after replacement of the coolant temp sensor it stayed steady at almost half bar value. So I would urge all new Diesel Thar owners to keep a eye on the engine temperature bar. The temperature needs to be higher than a certain value for the DPF to be getting cleaned. In my case the faulty sensor was reporting lower value to the ECU and hence the automatic DPF cleaning didn't take place resulting in high soot deposition & the DPF getting clogged ultimately and vehicle getting on to LIMP mode.
But its all good post the incident. I have covered about 5000 kms so far & the vehicle is behaving absolutely niggle free and am surely enjoying the baby.
Have planned some modifications-additions-deletion to make it suit my exact requirement. Shall be starting a ownership thread soon so more there. Till then Happy Miles.
Notice the temp bar gauge...this should be the general position
Last edited by GTO : 25th February 2021 at 12:45.
Reason: Moving to new thread
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