Some days I hate my car

A four wheeler has many uses and advantages, but some days I just wish I'd taken the bike.
When I first got a 4 wheeler.. the biggest advantage, was that I could now take my dog to work with me. So after getting permission at work, I did.. for almost 10 years(multiple work spaces).

I loved having the car then,

- It meant that my dogs didn't have to be alone at home.

- I could take a nice refreshing dog walk during work, while others did their smoke/coffee breaks and most of all

- I could rescue injured animals and take them to CUPA. 

An example of one of those success stories - Rumi
http://chaitanyakrishnan.blogspot.com/2014/08/rumi-after-2-years.html

I loved this automobile for enabling that. 

My dog is an invalid now, so she stays at home with my mom. Driving the car on the highway is now
something I don't look forward to.

Its been a while since I started feeling that way about it. Not the car's fault.. its just the responsibility I feel when I drive it. 

Every time is see an injured animal on the roadside.. I have to stop. While others go about their day ignoring the wretch.. I have to stop.. since I have a spacious back seat.

Like this little scamp from Aug 2016 ..

Aug 8 2016, Dodda Gubbi.

He was run over by a tractor and survived with a hip fracture.
Healed after a few weeks at CUPA and was placed with a family.

But there are many more that I don't tweet or Instagram..
..they're the ones that weigh me down. The ones that don't make it. 

I don't want to flood your timeline with sadness. 

Jan 23rd Hennur Road. rushed him to CUPA, but had to be put down. Injuries too severe.

I don't even take pics of most of them. 

Don't need to. They're etched in my skull.

These are the ones I think of when I drive past that stretch of road.. and wish I had been on my bike that day.. whizzing past the poor wretch on the road..
like most of us riders do.

Stationary Car Rear Ended

Some idiot rear-ended my car last night at around 8:30pm.
While it was parked outside my house.
The fool just drove off.. even though a bunch of people saw it happen!




Better pic taken in sunlight

One of the witnesses, an auto rickshaw driver noted down the vehicle's number ..and came with me to the station and told the cops what happened.

Easiest police report I've filed.

Heres the description of the vehicle that did the damage and fled the scene.

KA04 MM 7296 
Silver Toyota Innova 

Update:

The Culprit
The police today were busy with some special assignments, and so will not be physically out tracking down the guy. They'll just issue the FIR so I can claim insurance and get on with my life. The policeman said he'd let me know if they do get the guy.

I can live with that.. It's not like this guy is some high priority criminal..

Well unless he was driving recklessly because he was fleeing some crime scene.. Or something more serious.

FIR(First Information Report)
Police FIR.. Was a simple thing. The policeman dictated the letter aund I wrote it down and signed it. They put a stamp on it and handed me a copy.

Damage estimate:
Drove to the mechanic's workshop, he estimated the cost of repairs will be INR 5000.

Insurance Claim:
This was a simple process involving the following steps..
1) Called the 1800 number to HDFC Ergo and initiated a claim.

2) Claim investigator/adjustor called and said he'd go straight to the garage and see the car there. I just have to leave the car and documents there.

3) so I got the documents together and left them with the car at the garage.


The Insurance Amount
A few hrs later I get a call from the investigator, and go to the garage to meet him. He explains to me that...

A) The insurance policy I renewed a few months back in December.. The one I payed INR 4000 for(discounted from INR 7000 due to no incidents last year)..

B) Will only give me INR 2000 for the repairs.(which are worth INR 5000)... ie: I payed more for the insurance.. Than they will pay me for the stuff I need insurance for.

Why?
Apparently these insurance policies are only really useful in the first 3 years of your car's life. After that they take pretty much everything at depreciated value. The only things you can get 100% coverage for are damage to glass and theft. For the rest..you know the more common types of accidental damage.. You pay out of your own pocket.

Conclusion
So year end when they start calling me to renew this policy, I'm going to tell these conmen to get lost.

Will go get the cheapest policy I can legally buy.

OBD-II with Chevrolet Beat 2010 model

Had read up on these things years back when i was comissioned to model one.

    Dash
    by dash
    on Sketchfab

However I never actually got one for myself, since my android devices back then had really bad battery life, and were also entry level devices that i suspected would just hang if i ran Torque or other OBD (On-Board Diagnostics)apps. 

Anyway now that i have a good device(nexus5 ) i went ahead and got a cheap OBD(On-Board Diagnostics) device from this Amazon listing .. heres what it looked like on the Amazon page..

This arrived today and it looks less toy like and sort of more like a premium product. hmm..

I havnt yet taken it for a proper "drive". Ideally would like someone else to drive the car, while i fiddle around on the phone, but my dad just went back to Afghanistan. So I now have to wait a few weeks for him to get back. Or find a friend to drive it for me.. 

I have however installed and tested it with the engine idling and revving.. you know
..to see if it actually works.

Finding the socket/port to plug it in was actually the trickiest part of the exercise. I first looked under the steering column, since thats where a few forums had said it was.. but on proper inspection i found it neatly within reach.. just below that latch that opens the hood.

Chevrolet Beat 2010 Model

Its riiiight there...

You won't be able to reach it if your sitting in your seat... have to step out of the car and bend.. bend.. and twist a little.

There it is.. see it?

I actually lay down on my back and checked the entire bottom of the dash.. even the passenger side.. but i couldnt find another one. So if there is another one.. its either in use or tucked away in the shadows.

After Plugging it in i checked to see if it was visible. some OBD devices will run off the car's battery even when you turn the car off. So its something you need to check on.. otherwise it will just drain your battery (bluetooth transmitters use up a lot of juice).

Anyway there was no device in range, so then i turned on the ignition and left the car idling..
now it popped up in the list of bluetooth devices(remember to make your device visible though)..   pairing is easy.. it asks for the code.. and suggests using either 0000 or 1234 .. i don't remember which one i tried but it worked on the first try and then i was able to name the device(original name was just OBDII .. I added the Chevy Beat so i don't get confused later. 

I had already installed Torque, and on running it, it asked me to switch on my GPS(which was on.. but was in battery saving mode).. once i turned it on and restarted Torque, it took a few seconds to search for the bluetooth OBD device.. but kept coming up with a "Device not found.. searching again" message.. 

one quick look in settings showed me that it had the option to manually select an already paired device..

That turned out to be a handy feature. 

As soon as Torque found the device.. the dials and displays lit up.. and started reacting everytime a revved the engine.

I havn't tried it with any other apps yet(apparently Dash is good too).. 
will post an update when i do.. for now am using Torque Lite (OBD2 & Car) the demo version of Torque. 

Get it here at the android Play Store.

UPDATE: Safety issues

There have been concerns on various forums about whether a faulty OBD might mess up your car's ECU..

this guy adresses those concerns-

" I am an electrical engineer with 15 years experience, and for a few of those years I designed custom hardware and software for monitoring engine parameters over OBDII.

Even the buggy-est software sending the crappiest of messages is virtually incapable of messing up an ECU. Trust me, if anybody could fry an ECU by accident it probably would have been me - I put those things through hell as I tried to figure things out the hard way.

About the only messages that an OBD scanner can give an ECU are requests for info (which cannot mess anything up) and a request to clear the warning light (which either works or not). Deeper commands are proprietary to the auto manufacturer and are generally encoded (in other words, a bad dongle isn't going to accidentally be able to get into them). All OBD commands are checksumed to detect "crappy" messages and ignore them.

To mess up an engine (not an ECU), the software controlling the dongle would have to know the proprietary coding needed to access the deeper functions of the ECU, send a bad command (like uploading a crappy fuel map) in a properly formatted way. You might mess up the tuning, maybe even damage the engine, but that would not be the dongle's fault, would have to be very intentional, and makes it almost impossible to mess up the ECU.
In other words, don't worry about it. "

source - Robert Alan Gerhart's comment at http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/25/dashs-smart-driving-app-a-fitbit-for-cars-arrives-on-android/

Caviar Black Chevrolet Beat

Our 2 day old chevy.

We almost didn't buy this beauty coz we thought it was a 3 door.. and we were looking for a family car.. then a few weeks back we spotted a chevy showroom near our house, and drove by to see if the Beat was on the floor.. it was, so i went in to check it out. Noticing the two back seats, i asked the sales guy- "how do you get in the back seats?".. and lo and behold he opened the back doors with the magically disguised door handles(seamlessly integrated into the window frame).. :lol:


we didn't like any of the colours they had it in, so we just ordered the "caviar black".


UPDATE: heres the review of the car now that i've had it for a while

mine is a petrol vehicle so heres my review on that(for diesel or more detailed reviews click here http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Chevrolet+beat+review):

Pros: great for city driving(i drive to work everyday) and long distance(have driven from bangalore to goa with 4ppl and 1 big dog in the car). Mileage with ac is good(16 in city with ac, 19-20 on highway with ac) when used with Automatic Climate control.. otherwise same as any other ac car.

Chevrolet engine is sturdy and have had no mechanical problems in the last 2+ years

Cons: not for hills. during a recent trip to ooty, i discovered that the pickup is dreadful on steep hills. was ok once we were in ooty.. traveling to coonoor was fine.. coming back was great as well.. just the climb up to ooty was crap.

in fact for hills i can only recommend maruti vehicles

Chevrolet's service is nothing great.. infact they are quite un-helpful. after my free services were done, i just went back to my local general mechanic.. that guy is super polite, friendly and drops me home when i drop off the car and brings the car back to my place for no extra charge.

UPDATE(overdue):

A year after I got my Beat, Chevrolet launched the Diesel variant.
The main differences between the two are as follows:

	Beat Petrol	Beat Diesel
Cylinders, Type etc.	4 cylinders	3 cylinders
Displacement	1,199cc /1.2litre	936cc / 0.9litre
Max Power (PS@rpm)	77.9 PS @ 6200 rpm	57.1 PS @ 4000 rpm
Max Torque (NM@rpm)	106.5 NM @ 4400 rpm	142.5 NM @ 1750 rpm
Mileage (Kmpl)*	18.6	25.44

The big glaring difference that is touted the most is of course the mileage. However one must accept that the mileage difference is not just because of some magical properties of Diesel. 

The smaller engine will always give better mileage than the larger!

Now while the mileage did tempt me to go for an exchange.. I realised that in the end.. After driving my dad's old 800cc Maruti.. a 1199cc Beat was a big improvement.. no way will I be happy with that kind of downgrade.

As a petrol Beat owner I find it hard to be unbiased.. hence to be fair to the Diesel variant, heres a comprehensive review of the vehicle by Overdrive.