[R2D2]

Well, well, another trip down memory lane today. My Dad's Esteem was a Nov '95 model (carburetted) and the same colour. It was sold in 2001 to a bloke in GJ. Basic maintanance done by yours truly after the warranty was over including carb cleaning and setting. Choice of oil? Castrol GTX 20W-50 the only decent oil we had at that time.

Thanks once again!

[sohanbala]

Originally Posted by Sanidhya mukund

Hello! Thank you for the link. Have ordered the part and will hopefully get it soon. Sorry to be bothering you again, but can you please tell me if you have any idea on where to get the side AC vents that are fitted in the door pads? Since my car had been abandoned for 5-6 years, the HVAC system had become home for a bunch of rodents who had obliterated the AC vents to make and easy entry-exit point: Attachment 2222995

No worries, glad to hear the lights were in stock. I had sourced my AC vents from Boodmo. Unfortunately, when I checked now, it shows unavailable.

Sharing their part number below.

VENTILATOR FR DOOR L(GRAY) 83723M62B00
VENTILATOR FR DOOR R(GRAY) 83713M62B00

I can imagine how troublesome procuring these parts can be. I'll list out the options that worked for me.

Option 1

Contact your nearest MGP and ask them to do a live stock search for the following part numbers. If it shows in stock with any dealer within your state, the local MGP can put an email requesting the parts to be transferred to them. If a different dealer, you'll have to pay for courier charges to your MGP.

If no stocks comes up within your state, try searching for nearby states, if any comes up you can obtain the contact information of the dealer and contact them directly. Most likely the part will be in their dead stock and the wouldn't mind shipping it to you. Some dealers have told it's difficult to search or they can't send. In such cases I had local friends go to the dealer and collect parts over the counter.

Option 2

Contact Essarr MGP Bangalore or Rajkrishna Aditya Auto Spares Chennai, Essarr seems to have the biggest stock for Esteem and gypsy parts followed by Rajkrishna Aditya.
Both of these dealers ship to you if they have parts in stock. Since they are MGP dealers they can place order for parts which are open for order from Maruti too.
Not posting contact numbers here since I'm not sure if it's allowed, you can ping me on Instagram, or I'll post here if it's okay.

Option 3

Since your AC vent as such is fine, only the air guides are needed. You might be able to find them from scrap, it's fairly easy to remove the clip and insert the air guides.

Hope this helps, if nothing works, I can try checking my local scrap yard. I hope the wiring and AC ducts are intact, the AC ducts on type 1 is very thin.

[Sanidhya mukund]

Originally Posted by sohanbala

No worries, glad to hear the lights were in stock.
I had sourced my AC vents from Boodmo, unfortunately when I checked now, it shows unavailable.

Sharing their part number below.

VENTILATOR FR DOOR L(GRAY) 83723M62B00
VENTILATOR FR DOOR R(GRAY) 83713M62B00

I can imagine how troublesome procuring these parts can be.
I'll list out the options that worked for me.

Hope this helps, if nothing works, I can try checking my local scrap yard.
I hope the wiring and AC ducts are intact, the AC ducts on type 1 is very thin.

Thank you so much for the detailed response! These resources will surely be of great help! I think the local MGP dealer should be able to order these if I give them the part number that you gave. In fact, I have also noticed that most Maruti parts that I order on boodmo are from 'Essar' only. Scrap yards were a great resource, but after the NGT rule came into play, almost all the type-1 Esteems were scrapped long ago. This has led to a shortage of these cars in the scrap yards here in Delhi. The only cars one can find in scrap yards around here nowadays are 2003-2007 models, i.e cars that have been scrapped recently.
We were initially focussing on getting the car up and running, so we are yet to inspect the HVAC system in detail. However, I think the ducts should be fine because the rats had only damaged the AC vents to gain entry into the ducts to make nests.

Once again, thanks a tonne for creating this thread! I am only halfway through my project and this thread has already been of immense help!

[sohanbala]

The journey so far has been quite challenging, however all the learning was worth it.
A big thank you to all our fellow members here who helped fill in this thread with their valuable inputs. That being said, lets get into some updates.

The car has been driving well over the last one month, the fuel gauge does act up at times, the pump floater rod seems misaligned,However since the issue isn't always there, Ive decided not to remove the tank and check for time being.Moving to the rest, I have finally added the monograms.

Monograms

I spent a lot of time trying to find old brochures, photos and archives online to identify the exact monograms that came stock.I found the following badges came stock.

• Maruti logo (M badge) on hood
• Maruti Suzuki badge on trunk LH
• Esteem badge(Old font) on trunk RH
• 1.3L bade on left front fender

Since my car was from the early type 1s, they did not bear LX/VX badges.It seems that Esteem LX/VX trims were introduced later in 1996. It is during this update that the car received black door cladding.

Maruti logo

Initially I wasn't planning to keep the logo, decided to still get one to keep it stock.This is when i noticed some interesting bits.The original logo that came on the car had thinner lines however the new ones had a wider groove.It seems the logo slightly changed when they came to type 2 and type 3.The type 1 logo felt slightly heavier too.All other dimensions remained the same.
I got one badge from Boodmo, one from MGP and one from a local shop.All 3 of them turned out to be same, the new badge with a slightly different logo.
After talking about this to one of my mechanics, he mentioned he had an M badge with him, which was purchased it long back for his type 1, but never installed it.
He brought it to me and voila, its the same as my old badge, heavier and thinner lines.



On the left is the new M logo and the old one on right side.
If you observe closely you can see that the lines are thinner on the old one(logo on right).Similar to Omni M badge.

Attachment 2226247

The old badge feels more metallic while the new ones are fully plastic.


Type 1 Stock badge I got from my mechanic


Maruti Suzuki Badge

Getting the MS badge was a fairly easy process unlike the M badge, troubles came in when I finally got the badge.The MS logo is seen in both gloss and metallic finish on Esteems.I had the gloss one on our car, but I remember it was installed a few years back when the OG one had fallen off.However I could not recollect if it was matte or gloss in finish.Again after a lot of googling and asking around, an old thread on teambhp forum showed a similar matte finish logo on a 95 type 1.Yet the concern was I have personally seen Type 1s with the glossy badge.After talking to a lot of mechanics and early esteem owners, it was understood that the earlier type 1s did have the matte finish badge, this was replaced with the glossy ones from later type 1s.

Upper monogram is the one in gloss finish while lower is the matte one.
Another key difference being the matte one has embossed lettering while the the letters are embedded in the gloss one.The gloss one shares the same finish as the Esteem monogram.



The matte finish logo was the same seen on Gypsy and early 800s.

Esteem badge (old one)

This has been the most difficult to find,The Esteem T1 and T2 has a curvy font while the T3 had a sort of italic font for the Esteem monogram.


Esteem Type 3 badge.

The curvy old ones were nowhere to be found, only option left was to source one from scrap.Even though I found a fairly okay badge from scrap, I decided to keep it for last and to resume searching, that decision was worth it.
Thanks a ton to Bhpian @leoshashi for finding me the old Esteem Monogram, he was absolutely great help throughout the restoration, helping me with my queries at any odd hour.





1.3L Fender badge



Thankfully the fender badge has remained the same for all Esteems.



Iv'e gone through days and nights over countless images to gather all these details together.Finally we have all of the OG monograms collected.


Installation

The font badge is placed roughly half an inch above the grille line, there's a guide tape to mark the distance,MS Badge 1 inch from LH end Esteem badge 1 inch away from RH end.The 1.3L rightly at the middle of the left fender.
All Monograms added



I do understand I've been too picky on trying to be as OG as possible, the slightly different monograms are things that can be ignored, I just wanted to try my luck with it.
I'm still working on the audio setup, been behind it since June, more updates will be shared soon.



Thank you

[sohanbala]

Audio Setup

Before we had our first home PC back in 2006, the Sony Cassette player on our Esteem was the most interesting piece of tech I used to fiddle with as a kid.
Except for my elder brothers cassette collection we mostly had a single cassette playing devotional songs over and over again, which made me learn the entire lyrics.



This player was quite decent with a good blue backlit LCD and green button lights that matched the green speedo lights.Since the initial batches of Esteems did not come with an audio player, they had a dealer fitted one, I believe Sony was the recommended one since it came as a full kit comprising the Head-unit and 4 matching speakers (2x 4 1/2 inch speakers for font and 2x 6 inch speakers with grill for the rear) The player was working until 2008 or 09 after which the backlit failed and eventually the whole player stopped working.

During the cars restoration, everyone suggested going in for a new Bluetooth head unit, I do understand they are easier and have better connectivity, however I wanted to try keeping a cassette player on the Esteem.
After a lot of disappointment with various technicians (none took up a cassette player repair) finally Mr Karthi of Ajus Car Botique TVM agreed to help.I was very much relieved since he was the only one who approved my idea of keeping a cassette player since the car has been kept as stock as possible.
After inspection I was told that the Sony player had several component issues and the board had gone to a state beyond repair since getting Sony stereo components is very unlikely. Hearing this, I was about to leave the cassette player plan, Karthi suggested hunting scrapyards for a Maruti Kenwood OE Cassette player as some Kenwood parts are still available for cassette players.Kenwood being the OE for various brands like Mahindra and Fiat I had a ray of hope to find players.The search was pretty challenging as I wasn't able to spot even one decent player despite of looking for over a month.

Finally we found a Zen which was just driven in to be scrapped with a Kenwood Cassette player that was powering up.
Spoke to the owner and instantly bagged it up.




Upon checking it was found that the tape head mechanism had some issues while playing cassette, we did manage to fix this with some Sony mechanical parts, now the next issue was the processor, it kept cutting off. At this point we have already spent 2 weeks into the player revival after finding this player.It started getting tiring with all the running around and reading up on tape players, I rounded to the idea of getting the Cassette Player powered ON somehow and adding a bluetooth board to it, that would help me stream audio to the Kenwood Cassette player, but first I needed more players to scrap components.
Spent the next three months going around scrapyards and calling car owners with cassette players listed on OLX ads and ended up with these.



This time I was sure I had everything needed to get at least one player running well.
We had the processor replaced ,BT board added and voila the Amplifier IC (STA1136) has failed, leaving us with only 1 channel and none of the players I sourced has a working replacement IC



The frustration started getting onto me, for the next 2 months except for searching online sources for the IC, I dint do anything else on the player. One fine afternoon I got a call from our technician saying he came across a good condition Maruti Kenwood Cassette Player.The ports and casing looked almost new, it seems the previous owner had removed the unit and kept it aside while upgrading to a cd player.





Kenwood KRC 489, one of the last Kenwood cassette players used by Maruti, this one featured Changer controls, preamp and much powerful 45W output when compared to the older Kenwood with 30W out.

Speaker Configuration

Just when I thought I'm all sorted after finding the head unit, came the speakers.
Since the front speakers came on the dash and rear on the parcel tray, the speaker slots were 4.5 in. and 6 in. respectively.
Speaker options were very limited in this size range.I was initially planing to put some really good speakers, that's when a friend suggested to stick to the OEM specified speakers and match them with the head-unit since I'm not using an external Amp and the Kenwood player had only about 22W RMS per channel.
Again after a lot of searching we got a 4.5 inch, 25W RMS speakers for front and a slightly larger 6.5 inch. 30W RMS speakers for the rear.
The challenge was finding these low value speakers from good brands, thankfully we managed to find the old Kenwood ones online.



Added some spacers and hooked the rear speakers up completing the setup.




Started playing some tapes, nothing like some good old analog audio.The sound output was much better than what i had imagined.It had a very good range with clean definition.




There was noise as the FM started playing, I had almost forgotten about FM noise until I tuned in on this




Kenwood CD Changer


While searching for cassette players all around,I came across the old Service Center for Kenwood and Nippon, spoke to them about the Kenwood Cassette player and they allowed me to check their old scrap, found an IR remote for the player and a few CD Changers there, most players had issues with the gear drive and lens, seeing how far we've managed to get the player and speakers, they agreed to get me one changer readied. A new 5M long control cable for the changer had to be ordered through the SC, surprising Kenwood still had these cables.

After about 2 weeks, the cable arrived, we started checking players for good gear wheels and they replaced all the components within a few hours.







The mounting was a simple bolt on with the Kenwood mounts.Placement was a bit more inside, away from the trunk opening to avoid hindrance when loading luggage.





The changer holds upto 10 audio CDs, Had to find my old CD writer to burn some good FLAC audio files, it was fantastic to listen to them, after hearing Mp3 for a very long time.When changing discs, it takes around 5 seconds to change and load the next disc.I had forgotten most of the tape functions like B.S which means blank skip etc.
In present times, where cassettes are hardly seen and CDs rarely used, this setup does lack a lot when it comes to connectivity.Yet there's something nice about hearing a tape wind and listening to it, taking life slow.The fabric seats along with the wrapped door pads and the faint yellow cabin lights completes the 90s package.

[mvadg]

Wow! You have dedicated yourself to restoring this car to it's original state! Looks great.

Came here looking to find how much one of these in "running condition" would sell for in Bangalore, as a neighbor of mine wants to get rid of her car. Any idea, TBHPians?

[sohanbala]

Originally Posted by mvadg

Wow! You have dedicated yourself to restoring this car to it's original state! Looks great.

Came here looking to find how much one of these in "running condition" would sell for in Bangalore, as a neighbor of mine wants to get rid of her car. Any idea, TBHPians?

Thank-you, I'm not sure of prices in Bangalore must be slightly cheaper there, here in KL I've seen running T1s going between around 40-70k.

[esteem_owner]

Originally Posted by sohanbala

Audio Setup

Before we had our first home PC back in 2006, the Sony Cassette player on our Esteem was the most interesting piece of tech I used to fiddle with as a kid.
Except for my elder brothers cassette collection we mostly had a single cassette playing devotional songs over and over again, which made me learn the entire lyrics.

Hello,

I am new to this space, and to the auto world.

I have an Esteem VX(2001 model). It has a Kenwood KRC 385 audio system. The FM radio works fine, but the cassette player does not function. I have been trying to get some professional help to get it to work again, but nobody seems interested in handling car audio cassette systems. I really want to retain the original Kenwood Cassette player on the car.

Any advice/leads/ suggestions? I am in Bangalore.

Thanks!

Mod Note: Please quote ONLY the relevant bits of a post. Quoting a full, long post inconveniences our mobile readers.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by esteem_owner

I have an Esteem VX(2001 model). It has a Kenwood KRC 385 audio system. The FM radio works fine, but the cassette player does not function. I have been trying to get some professional help to get it to work again, but nobody seems interested in handling car audio cassette systems. I really want to retain the original Kenwood Cassette player on the car.

Your next query on Team-BHP will be "where do I buy cassettes, not available anywhere" .

Instead, buy an adapter that can stream from your phone to an FM radio (used to be many for the iPod back in the day). Enjoy the latest music!

[esteem_owner]

Originally Posted by GTO

Your next query on Team-BHP will be "where do I buy cassettes, not available anywhere" .

Instead, buy an adapter that can stream from your phone to an FM radio (used to be many for the iPod back in the day). Enjoy the latest music!

Haha, infact I have a ton of old cassettes, of golden old songs, which is why I was so keen on restoring the old Kenwood player

[greenhorn]

Originally Posted by GTO

Your next query on Team-BHP will be "where do I buy cassettes, not available anywhere" .

If you know the right fb groups, it's very much possible.
I picked these up for 1.5k for the lot last week (and the seller has more). After receiving them i realised a lot of them are sealed, and i don't want to open them !

[sohanbala]

Originally Posted by esteem_owner

Hello,

I have been trying to get some professional help to get it to work again, but nobody seems interested in handling car audio cassette systems. I really want to retain the original Kenwood Cassette player on the car.

Any advice/leads/ suggestions? I am in Bangalore.

Thanks!

From what I've seen, technicians don't touch them since none of the components are available and it needs alot of tinkering. Since your FM and console is working you'd only need the casette module with the drive, best bet would be to find any person who can work on a regular casette players to see if it's just something minor like the motor or drive belt. If not,
try looking scraps for old players usually the casette drive components with most Kenwood players are the same.You can easily swap parts.Check among Audiophile groups in your city if you're having trouble finding a technician.
Last option would be to find Nippon service centre in your city, they used to handle MS OEM Kenwood player repairs, if lucky they might have old parts or doner players.

[sohanbala]

It's been a year since my last post, the car had clocked over 4000 Kms and serves me well now.

After having the audio setup done, I was elated that 95% of my work is done(that's what I thought) however within the next 200 Kms my tuning started going off, the moment I leave the pedal, the car just felt as if it's gasping for breath, especially with the A/C ON.

After checking around my hometown, I just couldn't find the right person to do identify whats going on, finally my mechanic himself suggested Mr Udayan at Cochin, an ace mechanic who works on mostly classic cars. After talking with him, he suggested to bring the car with a spare carburetor.

Though the 6Hr drive to Cochin was daunting, I decided to take the car anyway, I arranged my stay at a cousins place in Cochin if at all there was a need to stay during the cars work.


Started early morning 5AM from my place by 11AM I was at Udayans place. After reaching there the first thing I noticed was this beautiful Mercedes he was working on.




Soon Mr Udayan came, a humble and very relaxed man, he idled the engine for a while and thoroughly listened to the note.



It was found that the distributor seal had started developing a leak, along with a slight crack on the distributor cap. We got ourselves a carburetor repair kit, some new cord wires, set of plugs, oil seal, new distributor cap and got to work. We spent the whole day working on re setting the distributor, both of us skipped lunch hoping to finish by evening.

The Denso distributor assembly



Despite of all efforts we couldn't finish by the end of the day, carburetor was still pending. I decided to stay another day in Cochin. We got to work early next morning.



After getting the carburetor and distributor sorted, I was eagerly waiting since morning to see how this goes.




After a final inspection at 4PM we took the car for a test drive and boy it was a joy! The engine happily started pushing even with the A/C ON, Idling became crisp. The drive and 2 days of standing was absolutely worth it.



I decided to stay that night in Cochin and started back next day morning, I had a fantastic drive along the MC Road, the engine was crisp and responsive.

However my happiness was short lived, just about 15Kms away from my home, the engine started stalling under load and especially at inclines. I still managed to drive home.

Next day we were back at my usual garage, Udayan had asked me to check the fuel pump and yes indeed the motor had failed. After several tries we managed to fit a Bosch motor to the fuel pump assembly which sorted the issue.
Now comes the new issue, one of the technicians had closed the bonnet too hard which caused it to touch the RH headlight corner, cracking it.



I started to loose all my hope at this point, its been one issue after the other, and this was a brand new set of lights. The dealer had told me they no longer have any more units available and its very difficult to find Esteem type1/M1000 headlights.
A few months went by and in the meantime I was able to correct the headlight brackets a bit more for slightly better clearance. Suddenly I get a call from the dealer saying he found 1 new headlight assembly for the Esteem t1 that too RH

The very next moment I picked it up and got the lights changed that day itself





Now with all these done, I can say Its been quite a journey but I've absolutely enjoyed working on the car, with this the only work remaining was some stock stickers to be added which would complete my dream of keeping this car as stock as possible.




Sticking with all the stock elements, she'd easily turn a few heads when parked, mostly with the question "is this an old car?"

[justin.das]

Originally Posted by sohanbala

It's been a year since my last post, the car had clocked over 4000 Km and serves me well now.

That's the best-looking Esteem I have seen in a long long time. Kudos for maintaining her in pristine condition.

Originally Posted by sohanbala

After checking around my hometown, I just couldn't find the right person to identify what's going on, finally, my mechanic himself suggested Mr Udayan at Cochin, an ace mechanic who works on mostly classic cars. After talking with him, he suggested bringing the car with a spare carburetor.

From your Team-Bhp handle, I assume you are from Trivandrum, There are multiple competitive Garages in TVM. I am also from the same city please reach out for any help.

Originally Posted by sohanbala

Sticking with all the stock elements, she'd easily turn a few heads when parked, mostly with the question "is this an old car?"

In my opinion, the original design ages gracefully if we fiddle with the way a car looks in some cases it will look better for the period but as time moves those mods will look awful in most the cases, where the original will shine

[Maky]

I cannot express how happy I am to see this!
My father had bought the exact same Esteem in the exact same colour. I have enjoyed so many childhood and teenage memories with my friends ; )

You've done an excellent restoration work. Good job sir!.