Gaurav

@Nikhil Saju Paul I am removing you from Maliha afternoon drive, as you can only sign in one drive for this week due to limited places for everyone.

Fredy, it's a nice and a daring move depending if you have space in your driveway.

Jumping to conclusion of ECM being bad, I would suggest to research first if this MY has this as a known issue or not. If not, Ill still send car to a third garage to rescan it as a total stranger.

13 hours ago, m_abdelfattah said:

The other question, can I negotiate with Volvo and get a better price or a better offer? or no way I can get anything than the advertised price?!

You should def do that and lot more, maybe Xaf style or showing them competitor pricing or used car market pricing to lower the offer.

Hey, how come Volvo aren't doing special deal on Ramadan......!

Might be better if you wait a month more, so that all car dealers drop substantial pricing due to Post-covid business strategy, I heard Mercedes and BMW are working on new pricing to generate more sales.

Spot on @Xaf, same I was about to suggest, but been busy today.

So @m_abdelfattah you have below options and see what best suit your taste (heart) & wallet (mind), place in same order from heart - mind. Hope it helps.

1. Buy same Volvo if your heart is set on it or on some feature - self reward is priceless.
2. Buy 6-12 month old Lexus NX - (F Sport Platinum) Full option
3. Buy new Lexus NX - Platinum
4. Buy 1-2 year old Lexus RX - Flagship model and will have more bells and whistle and will hold insane resale value.
5. Buy 1-2 year old Lexus GX - If you plan to add bit of off-road in the future + suffice for future family expansion.
6. Buy new Prado - If you plan to add good mix of work and exploring off-road in the future + suffice for future family expansion.

Few other tips for new car buyer, if you hold your first year temptation, you can easily shave 20-30% off the ticket price and you can def find sweet deal these day which are 6-12 months old.

Secondly, if car residual value is not an issue -  Choose German, UK, EU cars in UAE. If resale value is a concern then best is to stick to Japanese boys and second best is US.

@desertdude I "heard" that in 2018 Nissan and Infiniti fixed the CVT issue after those class action lawsuits in US, but still if someone interested in buying Infiniti, they need to do thorough check and research over last two year faulty claims all around the globe.

34 minutes ago, m_abdelfattah said:

LOL! If I will run away from Infiniti and make Volvo my 2nd choice, what should be my first choice? With the range AED 150-190k? The full options of the Lexus NX is 230k!

Well good you share the budget now and if you can share few more details, that can help even more.

Why you are buying compact SUV, in first place for 190K?

• Fuel constraint?
• Space constraint?
• Vehicle size constraint?

If it fits your current requirement, then by all means go for it. I'm just asking.

Is this going to be a family vehicle or commute or both?

Is this going to be the first or second household vehicle?

Any family extension plan in near future?

How soon you plan to change it next?

Ignore this if this doesn't apply:

• Hope you know most of these compact SUV arent even good for beach sand, let alone the real off-road.

Well buying a brand new car based on a single hi-tech feature is not a good move tbh. As many times car companies, market and advertise simple features or jargons as life changing or over-dramatized features. Please make sure to test drive and test this Auto pilot feature rigorously if this is really what you are buying this car for.

Volvo auto pilot is a mix of auto lane assist + adaptive cruise control.

I have used the adaptive cruise control in my Range Rover that has a restriction of keeping a minimum of 50 meter distance to be operational, so in short I have never used it as traffic here in Dubai never leave a 50m gap between two cars. Either it was too early to be used in cars or it needed more real life adjustments to have variable speed limitation based on speed and not 50m set rule for 60 km/h or 120 km/h.

Also as Sertac shared a 2015 Volvo V70 (110K, when new) for 18,500 AED in May 2020 clearly shows a very big drop in resale value (30% YoY) of Volvo, even after 148k km. You wouldn't find this steep depreciation in Japanese (Lexus and Infiniti) purely because, they are tried, tested and successful in the UAE weather. Even the German and US cars have lot of trouble after 5 years of UAE heat from fading switches, knobs to falling headliner, breaking all plastic and rubber inside and outside the car etc.

If your heart is set at Volvo, then surely go for it but if not then there are plenty other good contenders. Take your time and research wisely.

Infiniti and Volvo is a bit of wrong match of league to start with.

Infiniti, Lexus, Jaguar goes together and Volvo, Nissan and Toyota goes together.

My personal choice will be Infiniti QX50 over Volvo XC40/60.

• Infiniti luxury and premium feel is uncomparable.
• Infiniti (Japanese) are more reliable and well tested over EU brands in UAE.
• XC40 is a new league of its own in compact crossover since 2018, so need more time to mature and demonstrate trustworthiness before asking for 150-200K AED.

Only downside of Infiniti will be the CVT gearing, depending on if they have fixed it well now or not.

If resale value is not your main concern, then Jaguar E-Pace makes much better choice with looks and performance.

Have you considered Lexus NX...?

5 minutes ago, Frederic said:

Well it’s not my car. So I can only act as an intermediate and try to help her out. Agree there are far better workshops around but I haven’t met good electronics guys so far yet. Not even in my favorite shop 😜

I understand your concern and that's the right way to help someone. Same here.

However, on the contrary getting second opinion is only the way forward. Either you recommend or she search and find someone, because if this guy 13K is acceptable to the car owner, they wouldn't be talking to anyone.

Simply change the workshop, there are plenty in al quoz. Including your favorite one.

At least he will be the best out of the worst equation   

@tjsingh might able to help you.

Many many happy returns of the day @Srikumar, may you have many faya, iftar bowl and moreeb this year.

Have a great birthday, bro. And god bless you, always.

As a first step and basic common sense approach.

1. Put a new battery and try to start the car.
   • Get those mobile battery delivery guys as they do make an attempt to check if battery replacement is unable to start the car because they are tied to selling a battery to start the car.
2. If car is still not starting do the OBD scan as its 2009 model.
3. Get all the fault codes and start reverse search them to find a solution.
4. Many times 1 bad sensor or valve or plug can throw ton of error codes, so fix one thing at a time to find the actual culprit and not like above quote to change from ECM to plugs, relay, injectors, CPS etc.
   
   It's like shooting 30 bullets in the dark and hoping 1 will kill the enemy.

As desertdude mention, some time modern cars sitting idle chew lot of battery and throws all sort of tantrums.

I had similar issue in ML500. After a 30 days vacation car didn't started and showed gear failure message on the dashboard. Change the battery and car started in single attempt. As it run electronic gear oil that couldn't get required current so it showed the message of gearbox failure instead of weak battery, pretty dumb.

Something similar happen in Cayenne too and after jump start as battery was pretty new, car came alive.

Do what you can and see if you can get any positive headsup or Barry support.

If you are completely hand tight, as a first step I will send the car to another garage and get "HONEST" second opinion, as this quote and estimate sounds purely dumb and highly misleading.

Like I always say, stay away from a garage or mechanic who """"""CANNOT""""" guarantee his own workmanship.

I bet after 13K, they will still pull another 3-4k before car comes home.

All you biking experts, which oil or lubrication you use in the bicycles?

I'm picking my bike today after 6 months of resting, chain and gear sprocket looks pretty dry and dusted.

Brent Walter has created the “Volkspod” by welding together the fenders from all four corners of old VW Beetles. The scooters have a rear and taillights from the original car and wide bicycle-type handlebars for the rider to hold onto.

Power: 3 horsepower engine
Speed: 25 miles per hour.

I personally find Brent Walter a genius to put an iconic shape and design for such a creative use.

And they do look cute and different in a nice way. What do you guys think....?

https://theheartysoul.com/volkswagen-beetle-repurposed-to-create-a-fashionably-old-fashioned-mini-bike/

Love your click bait skills, they always offer a surprise and a good laugh at least.

2 minutes ago, asifk said:

@Gaurav How was the recce drive yesterday?

Our recce drive was nice.

However we are still not posting the drive for coming Friday (1 May) due to the mix response we have received from various places and instances.

Hoping things get better soon, so we can resume drives safely.

What an interesting and educating video for car enthusiasts, mechanics and technicians who are always in search of new tech, parts and ways to optimize more power.

Some lovely concepts shared and cleared with a great presentation skills.

53 minutes ago, Nizam Deen said:

@Srikumar @Gaurav it seems that we are getting over the hurdle and life will soon become normal. any plans to organise a drive in the near future?

We are equally anxious and waiting to restart the off-road drives.

Still there is lot of confusion and mix up going on, when it comes to desert drive. As often it is misunderstood as a gathering. But we are trying our best to get the maximum clarity over the phone and email.

We are going 5 cars tomorrow to recce and if its favorable, then we might be able to post a small drive for coming Friday.

2 hours ago, desertdude said:

Don't listen to this ludite! Lol he has an aversion to anything made in this century.

And that one thing with self leveling is enough to spoil the party, if not kill you, not-so-luddite dude.

He is talking from every week experience seeing tons of cars with all sort of gizmos from this century and not just flying sim from couch.

Shared by Mitsubishi Motors Middle East & Africa on LinkedIn.

34 minutes ago, desertdude said:

Ramadan/summer  people usually do night drives and that unfortunately is in lock down timings still 

There is nothing "USUAL" at this time.

25 minutes ago, desertdude said:

Reliability wise it's pretty solid from what I've heard. All forums say this as well as a couple of people I know who have them and use it off road regularly.

And I have seen it otherwise, from a colleague who clocked 200k on it when I join his ride to AD and had plenty of time to talk. On road reliability (let alone off-road) and shaky and flaky US standard interior was big turn off.