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Observations after a hard driving trip to Ooty and back (770 Km all incl plus about 400 odd km in the city)
Long Distance Performance:
Engine: Brilliant feeling. First class pickup, Lovely feel on the long distance highway- effortless mile munching engine - lovely to hear the faint turbo whine while accelerating on the highway. (Didnt listen to much music while driving because I was too pleased with the Turbo Whine and Engine sound.)Very smooth and powerful.
Route:(BMIC Road, Mysore bypass, Nanjangud, Gundlupet, Bandipur,Masinagudi, Ooty) - Particularly bad and pot holed stretch from Nanjangud onwards to Bandipur). And Several bits and pieces of BMIC Road (notably the stretch where it is about to reach Banerghatta Road)were also deeply rutted and potholed, since the road is still not complete.
Driving Comfort: Fantastic, snug and secure when belted up in the front 2 seats. My wife kept saying how comfortable and safe she felt in the Scorpio all the way. Had loaded the back fully with assorted paraphernalia plus golf bag etc etc. Also had placed 2 of my steel wheels in the boot space as ballast. Nitrogen filled tyres added to our comfort. Had done wheel balancing and alignment before starting out.
The Scorpio handled all bad stretches with ease. High ground clearance helped a great deal, so I didnt really slacken speed too much even over the bad stretches.
Hill Driving: Going up Sigur wasnt as much of an effort as it used to be in my Bolero, since this Crde Turbo engine easily takes the steep incline and frequent hairpin bends with relative ease in 2nd gear. Sometimes, when slowed down terribly by buses or other slower traffic it was necessary to drop down to 1st,gain a little momentum and then move along in 2nd. The compact proportions of the Scorpio and its good clicky and tight gearing makes for a very good hill driving experience, chucking the jeep around the bends and curves and powering out in 2nd or 3rd where necessary. No trouble at all - The SCORP Does NOT handle like a boat, as I had been led to believe. But please ensure that the rear is well loaded with ballast because this car is at its best when fully loaded.
The new improved rear suspension helped a lot in keeping all the luggage intact and in one place, unlike the Bolero's leaf springs which used to chuck things up and down a bit. Body roll in the hills was certainly not as pronounced as I had been led to expect. Even when I took 4 passengers inside and around the Nilgiris, driving at reasonable speeds in the hills (60-80kmph) at times, there was no problem. It is a real pleasure to drive the Scorpio on the good roads between Ooty, Coonoor, Kotagiri and back up from Kotagiri to Doddabetta and thus to Ooty.
Even on the bad stretches of rutted, muddy roads inside certain parts of Ooty and around the Nilgiris, we noticed the Scorpio handling everything without any protest. The only trouble was caused by some small piles of tar and small pieces of concrete jelly from the road works, which I was forced to go over - this caused some tar and pieces to get into the front wheels, near the ball joint and lower arm - some pieces had worked their way into the space between the wheel boss and the rim mounting, causing a squeaky noise each time we turned to the left. This eased off though, with a little driving around and going on bad roads, which must have caused the tar to fall off.
However on the return journey, on the smooth and beautifully surfaced Mysore Bangalore superhighway, at speeds past 130kmh, I did find a slight amount of steering vibration and negative feedback - I attributed this instinctively to my pushing the vehicle on bad terrain during the trip to have caused the Tyre Balancing and Alignment to have gone off kilter.
Fuel Economy: Did 380 km (including uphill etc and filled up 36odd Litres.
On the return, we had clocked 390Km (including a detour into Mysore etc) and filled up 37 odd litres today. Since I do not follow all the general suggestions about OPTIMUM SPEED of driving etc, I am quite happy with the average return of about 10 odd Kmpl. I prefer to enjoy my car, and testing its capabilities, but of course, within reason and within bounds of responsibility.
Work necessary after the round trip:
Tyre Balancing, Alignment and rotation - all 4 tyres in a simple X Rotation Pattern - (the 5th one will come into play after the first 5000km has been run.)
We noted this morning that all 4 tyres had become pretty un balanced and needed a complete job of re-weighting etc to bring them to normal.
Also noted that the windscreen washer hose had become disconnected from its place.
We also noted that the alignment had gone off by +/- 3 points - where it is supposed to read 18 on each side, it read 15 on each side.
I am sure this was largely because of the extremely bad stretch of road between Nanjangud and Bandipur and of course, the rutted track driving and bad broken stretches while commuting within Ooty and the Nilgiris.
All this was soon put right of course.
With the Nitrogen filled tyres, I am not feeling any difference in the tyre pressure yet, but will be checking and filling up with Nitrogen this week (since the chap is not open on Sundays) - will write separately about my findings on that.
And of course the poor Scorp badly needed a good bath, both inside and outside, so it felt nice to take it for a grooming session at Lalbagh Road to the Automatic Car Wash and Shampoo job there!
All in all, I am extremely glad I chose to stick with Mahindra vehicles over all other choices and buy the new Scorpio Crde 2.6 Lx.
Next week I will give you feedback after a hard driving trip to Coorg and back.
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