955 km roadtrip over a weekend in my Wolf'd Ford Aspire 1.5L Sport

The car is nearing 50k kms and crossed 7 years last month. Although there were thoughts of upgrading, I don't think I will at least for another couple of years or more.

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The car did a long trip after a while over the weekend which was to Velankanni and back and covered 955 kms in the process. Apart from taking it for a short spin during the weekend and starting it up midweek for few minutes, it is hardly used otherwise. The last long trip was to Calicut in March.

Thankfully, the roads all the way to Velankanni is in good condition now and the onward journey especially was enjoyable due to less traffic. There are some nice straight stretches of highway nearing the coast where traffic is not too high either and I could keep a steady speed for long durations. With the addition of Ceratec in the last oil change, the engine is smoother now and revs up quicker too.

On the return, there was a long jam on the Thoppur ghats due to roadworks and all the vehicles where on stop and go mode for almost a km on the sharp incline. I saw around ten cars parked with their hoods open probably with the clutch overheated. On my car it was fine, but with all the hard revving before and after, there was a slight clutch shudder the next day which went away once the engine warmed up. The new Continental UC6 were good on grip and comfort, but the tyre noise was higher than I expected for a new tyre. Only when the road surface was the smooth type, it was quiet. But the grip sure is good, as I experienced on a drive on the Satellite ring road few months ago. It felt like the car was on rails. The wet characteristics was good too as I experienced on the highway doing good speeds.

The car is nearing 50k kms and crossed 7 years last month. Although there were thoughts of upgrading, I don't think I will at least for another couple of years or more. I still enjoy the car every time I drive , especially on the highway. It is hard to get a package like this which has the power to hit silly speeds quickly, handles decently and is predictable and is small enough to squeeze through traffic and to top all this, gives a good fuel efficiency which was 20 kmpl for this trip which included multiple times where I ended up leaving bigger cars in smoke.

Odo is at 49850 kms.

Picked up the OEM sunshades for the rear windows from a fellow member which proved to be useful during the journey.

On the newly opened stretch between Nagapattinam and Thanjavur.

Before and after a pressure wash after the trip.

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