Chevrolet Spark (Velvet Sparky): 20,000+ Kms Review

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@Chayan, Where are you sir?

BTW, Today I was able to check FE in LPG. I filled LPG for Rs. 500 at the cost of Rs.47.45 which comes around 10.5 liters. I was able to drive only up to 64 KMs which is around 6KMs per liter. Man am going to DIE with this kind of LPG.

Tomorrow am going to KLN, Ambathur and let me find out what is in store for me there.

 

[Gurrala74]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@Sethu

Is your calculator working fine, oh God that is a pathetic record of FE with LPG.

There is something wrong with the car seriously, check with KLN and if you do not have confidence with them then I suggest you to go to the other dealer TVS(I heard they are very good in Chennai)

 

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Today I have been there at KLN for checking.

Last time when I went [when 2500 was in ODO] they filled upto neck, drove some KMs, filled again upto neck and calculated the FE it was 15 [Highways drive, they do test for FE only in highway].

I did the same last time and refilled again till neck. So petrol was upto the brim when I went there assuming they must do the same.

But the rules changed by them that they should use Auto cut-off method only to check FE. Unfortunately now this method may not work since the tank is full. As soon as the dispenser go in it will cut-off.

So I told them I will come next week. And also they said they will call the LPG kit guy also to do some inspection when i said yesterday's result.

BTW, when i asked about re-programming thru ECU they said it is not available in SPARK. I told them strongly that it is there. Pls confirm me Sparky Owners.

 

[chayan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@chayan I took Emission test yesterday and pls find attached the report.

View attachment 86997

View attachment 86998​

Actually while checking Co (% by vol) shows Zero only. The guy who tested before me was maruti 800 and for him it has shown some figure without anything. [While waiting I peeked inside the work station hehe]

Then the emission test guy told me to accelarate a little bit.

When I checked with him, now a day all Baharat 4 Stage vehicles shows less Co generally. But particularly most of the Chevy petrol engine products shows almost zero and if he prints the report as it is, the customer themselves are telling him that the machine is not working. So he asked me to accelarate.

@Chayan, what this tells?

Hi Sethu,
Sometimes with years of use, carbon deposition happens within the engines and injectors which bring down the efficiency of your engine. This decreases FE and a tell tale sign is your pollution/emission report.
But in your case everything looks OK. I just wanted to check as it is LPG is a cleaner fuel any day.
Some link that might help:
Wheeler Dealers Terraclean.flv - YouTube
Terraclean Fuel and Post Combustion Decarbonizer - YouTube

 

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Friends, Yesterday also a very disappointing day for me with my sparky.

As I have mentioned last week, I went to KLN's Service center with half-a-tank of fuel so that he can refill in auto cut-off mode and do the FE check.

I was supposed to go there by 10, but due to other tasks for home minister, I was able to reach the service center only by 11. By the time the road tester has gone with some other vehicle. So I had to wait till 11.30 till he returns. Once he was back, we started from service center and reached fuel station around 11.45. filled 12.24 liters of petrol.

We went on Thambaram - Puzhal highway for test drive. The points I noticed on his drive was

• He never crossed 2400-2500 rpm
• Cruised always at 80 KM/PH speed or below that
• AC was in 2nd point while starting then changed to 3 [Highest being 4]
• could not see the clutch position
• changed gears at appropriate speed like after 10 to 2nd, after 20 to 3rd, after 30 to 4th and after 40 to 5th
• he said for testing they need to drive nearly 40 or above.

After 47 KM we went to the fuel station and filled fuel at the same dispenser and it filled only 2.56 which calculates FE as 18KM/PL [47/2.56]. I was amazed at this.

Then with a satisfying smile I requested the road tester to accompany me for a same distance/same road test but this time let me drive, so that he can see my driving style and find if am making any mistake. But he said, he has some other work to be done since his another partner will not be available in the noon session. I agreed to his point, we went back to server center, dropped him and gave the results to the Customer Care manager. I had requested to change the wiper and OVRMs cover. Since it was lunch time no one was there. I suggested I will go for a drive myself and do the testing and find the results.

I went on the same highway and drove for 44.47 KMs and refilled fuel. Surprisingly it drunk 4.37 liters which calculates FE as 10 KM/PL [44.47/4.37]. This really shocks me.

I followed all the steps followed by the road tester and I get lessor FE.

Actually I noted one thing in this exercise was, during our first drive with full tank, the last bar in fuel level indicator disappeared after 30 KMs only. But when I did test drive, the last bar disappears immediately after i started.

With this I doubt, that the first time when we refilled after service center road tester's test it did not auto cut-off after full tank. it did before that itself due to flashing of petrol at the dispenser before it reaches the level[I think we discussed about this point earlier in TAI]

After this I went and told the customer care manager about this and asked for some other accurate method for calculating FE. I was expecting some gadgets like OBD kind of stuff. But those service center guys did not know anything about it.

But after some time they said, there is a device called Mileage tester in which we can fill exactly one liter of petrol and do the mileage test which might be accurate. But unfortunately it was not available with them yesterday and they are expecting it after week. So once they have it, I will go with them for accurate road test.

When I was talking about the FE in LPG they said they LPG filling station might be a problematic one. For that I said, i had tried with various stations in Chennai as well as in other cities also.

So again I have to wait for their call.

 

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Oops. No feedback for my previous post? Wondering.

Anyway, I am happy to say that my sparky completed 11111 KMs yesterday.

​

And Yesterday I wanted to see where ECU plug is located in my sparky. First I started searching for it below steering wheel behind the Dash Board.

​

Oops. I could n't figure-out anything and could n't find out what I want.

Then suddenly i saw it. It is just below the dash and easily accessible.

​

Now I should think of good OBD Scanner tool either wired one or with Bluetooth connectivity.

Am looking for this tool mainly for FE related.

 

[Gurrala74]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@Sethu Sir

Congrats on that magic number 11111 !!

First I comment on the FE issues, I would like to suggest you something, as I feel you are thinking about FE of your Sparky than required. Just do this for a while, just drive your sparky few days without thinking its FE figures, just fill petrol/LPG and use it. Do this for a week or two.

Visit the different service center(TVS) and check if they have any FE measuring thing(1 litre checking) if so do a test with that too.

It may be a not a perfect method, but try doing this. Fill the petrol of Rs.500/- when your last digit starts blinking and see the kilometer reading when again the same digit starts blinking.

I still feel there is nothing wrong in your car and the variations of FE may be due to different pumps filling and testing methods

 

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@Sethu Sir

Congrats on that magic number 11111 !!

Thank you sir. Last magic no was 7777 which I took on 12th of Oct 2012. it has took near 6 months for me to drive 3334 Kms.

First I comment on the FE issues, I would like to suggest you something, as I feel you are thinking about FE of your Sparky than required. Just do this for a while, just drive your sparky few days without thinking its FE figures, just fill petrol/LPG and use it. Do this for a week or two.

Visit the different service center(TVS) and check if they have any FE measuring thing(1 litre checking) if so do a test with that too.

It may be a not a perfect method, but try doing this. Fill the petrol of Rs.500/- when your last digit starts blinking and see the kilometer reading when again the same digit starts blinking.

Already i have met KLN motor guys last week and discussed about the same. Once they got the mileage tester I will try to find the accurate figures. If there is any problem then I will try contacting TVS for further actions

I still feel there is nothing wrong in your car and the variations of FE may be due to different pumps filling and testing methods

But we know when we are in long trip in which we can calculate without any of those measurements. In that also it is not showing correctly. There could be some minor difference in our method. for example when the official one is 18, in my calculation of direct method, i.e. I filled 20 liters of petrol and if it runs for 300 KMs then the FE is 15 KM/l which is acceptable. but I can drive it for 250 KMs or something like that which comes around 12 or so. That is worrying me.

Last week I filled gas of 10 liters in which I was able to drive only for 64 Kms which is just 6.4 KM/l which is very bad. Even though the LPG station is having cheated on me will it be that bad? But yes, still I need to check LPG with different fuel stations and different times of day. Some one told me if I could fill LPG at afternoon, i might get more advantage. Let me check it and give feed back here.

 

[chayan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Last week I filled gas of 10 liters in which I was able to drive only for 64 Kms which is just 6.4 KM/l which is very bad. Even though the LPG station is having cheated on me will it be that bad? But yes, still I need to check LPG with different fuel stations and different times of day. Some one told me if I could fill LPG at afternoon, i might get more advantage. Let me check it and give feed back here.

@Sethu: You should always (i.e. when ever possible), fill up LPG (or CNG) in the very early morning or very late night. The ambient temperature has a lot to do with liquefied pressurised fuel like LPG. So in summary you get more fuel when the temperature is low. Even 2-4 degrees change (say between early morning and peak afternoon) can make a lot of difference.
No wonder why the auto-wallahs make line at the pumps in the morning or late nights.

 

[Gurrala74]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@Sethu

I agree with you on your measurement of highways, so for me the best method is to forget about the FE and enjoy the car till my pocket is empty

 

[Releesh]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Sethu Sir.
I'm 100% sure the LPG guys cheated you. Try some other Branded LPG outlets like reliance which we can believe. Before 3/4 years, when we had Cielo (LPG fixed), I had to came across same situation many times. While we use petrol it give 10+ km/ltr, and the same time Gas mileage was very low. Later as per our local mechanic suggestion, we tried Domestic LPG, we got high mileage.
there was only one LPG pump near my home at that time and the next pump was 25 km away. Before six months, the LPG pump near my home got closed. i guess its due to many complaints regarding quantity ( and also most of the users moved to the near by Reliance Pump which was newly opened).

 

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Thanks Releesh. Let me try with some other stations.

 

[Akash]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Many congratulations for the 11111kms mark. Lets see how long it takes you go get to the 111111kms mark .

On a serious note, I second Reelesh's. You may try switching to a different gas station and check out the FE. Hopefully, you will get better results.

 

[Gurrala74]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

Many congratulations for the 11111kms mark. Lets see how long it takes you go get to the 111111kms mark .

On a serious note, I second Reelesh's. You may try switching to a different gas station and check out the FE. Hopefully, you will get better results.

@Akash are you serious on 111111kms , I don't think so and would be a punishment to Sethu, if my prediction go well, then he will change to a diesel car very soon

 

[sethumurugan]

Re: Velvet Sparky - Review After 10,000 Kms on Odometer

@Akash are you serious on 111111kms , I don't think so and would be a punishment to Sethu, if my prediction go well, then he will change to a diesel car very soon

100% true Gurala sir. I am waiting for that miracle moment!!