Gaurav

Maybe when you are little free, start explaining in more detail so we can advise.

More importantly, I like to know that how long you had her and based on how many drives you concluded or thinking to have certain modifications?

Primary reason for this is because you switch offroad car and also come back after long break, so you can't fully compare your previous car comfort, safety or power with another as all cars are different. If you have done 10+ offroad drive and face certain specific issues like bouncy suspension, failure to climb in first gear or hit the bumper on every descend etc. are more sensible reason to consider an appropriate mod.

Get the spare tire sorted first.

I agree with Sri, and wait to hear if you have taken her offroad and whats your main objective modification: Power, Safety, Cosmetics or Moreeb hill climb

14 minutes ago, Javier M said:

Superman?

Nope

14 minutes ago, shadow79 said:

The fready I ment

Nope

Well done @Shamil for sharing your incident with bold outlook to accept the failure, mistake or bad luck with open heart to help other avoid it and learn from collective experience. 

Keep it up and I'm sure we gonna see stronger, smarter and more seasoned Shamil soon.

Nice input @Jas Gajaria spot on.

2 minutes ago, Ren13 said:

@WiLfY 🤔

Last guess from my end bro.

Nope

Brilliant idea, but first decide who will pay for such service and then you will be in chicken and egg cycle.

Sellers will say buyers should pay and vice-versa and dealers will say consumer should pay. Ultimately main idea creator will curse himself that why they hell he decided to do something new and helpful in this market.

You will be shocked to hear this, when I sold my Range few days back guy said that I should be paying for RTA passing for transfer and we had a laughing argument over 170 dhs. Finally he gave up when I ask him to check here with any 5 people, if any 1 says seller should pay, Ill happily pay. However if car fails, then i'll pay for it. Finally car passed and he paid, quietly.

Imagine the mentality of a matured person buying 83K car in cash and arguing over 170 dhs.

Just now, Ren13 said:

@shadow79

Yeah, his name is Saleem.

Nope.

11 minutes ago, Ren13 said:

The guy with the Rav4 🤔 sorry cant get his name.

You mean Saleem?

Nope.

Guess the offroad driver: He always have an "ID"

After few newbie and intermediate drives, now it's time for fewbie drivers to roll up their sleeves to test their skills in the sand of Lisaili, Dubai. Lisaili is famous for its white sand, that means it's difficult to read and plus lisaili has lot of technical dunes to bump the challenge few notches high. It is a perfect place to test your maneuvering skills and speed control with lot of tolerance. If time permits we might end up the drive towards Qudra or Solar park area for tasting some medium rolling dunes for ridge riding, side sloping and testing your offroad skills further.

When: 27 Sep 2019, Friday
Meeting time: 05:00 AM, the convoy will move sharply at 05:15 AM
Where: EPPCO Fuel Station, Lisaili

GPS Coordinate: https://goo.gl/maps/xW7Lz4EM9xLBXsaXA

Level of drive: Fewbie and above
Type of Car: Any proper 4x4 with front and back tow hooks and 10 inches of ground clearance.
Plan: Drive and enjoy and end with a breakfast in shade (if possible).
What to bring along: Snacks - whatever you like with little extra to share, water, smiles, stories, and enthusiasm.

Approximate finish time: 9 - 10 AM (Max)

MUST READ: 

• Off Road Driving - Roles & Responsibilities
• Off road Driving Etiquette's
• Off-road Convoy Rules

Please RSVP on the below calendar:

 

 

Using Carswitch has been a total waste of my time, money, hassle, email and storage space.

Carswitch Review - TOTALLY DISAPPOINTING.

There has been another thread here where a lot of people discussed and debated if Carswitch is real or scam or not, so I thought of testing this new car selling service myself while selling my Range Rover to write a detailed review on Carswitch to help other car owners.

Read my full review with 10 reasons before thinking of using Carswitch.com by yourself, so your expectations are set to reality than what they advertise and promote themselves as No 1. car selling site in Dubai.

First they charge 100 Dhs (earlier 300 Dhs) to come and take pictures and list your car in Carswitch.com.

Then Carswitch charges below commission if they can sell your car at the value you expect: Sound interesting (only this point).

And I'm sure because of this kicker plenty of car owners must be falling in the trap, I will explain it soon.

Carswitch Commission Structure

• 2,100 AED for less than 50,000 car value
• 2,625 AED for 50,000 - 89,000 car value
• 3,150 AED for 90,000 and above car value

Condition: If you overprice the car to add commission then you also need to change price in other classified sites.

So I decided to list my car with carswitch on 20, Aug 2019:

2012 Range Rover Vogue Supercharged
Autobiography Kit from dealer
GCC Spec, Full options
Full Service History from Al Tayer
Odometer: 70,750 kms

Expecting 89,000 AED, while dealers are advertising similar car with low kms for 110K and no private seller was selling similar car with low kms at the time of advertising.

Carswitch was very effective in pre-sales follow up and called me 3 times to remind and agree on time, to list the car.

Finally Carswitch listed my car on 20th Aug 2019 for 89,000 Dhs, but with a with a wrong title.

• Sent a mail to correct the title but no one replied till 8 days. (yeah, lost 8 days).
• Copy to various other email as well and title got changed, but now with another mistake.
• After couple of more emails, finally correct title has been displayed with little restriction.

WRONG TITLE

CORRECT TITLE AFTER 8 DAYS

 

Here are my reasons for calling Carswitch.com totally disappointing for car sellers:

FIRST 

If they are car experts, then how can they mess up between names/editions that come with a price difference of 100K when new?

• Range Rover Sport
• Range Rover HSE
• Range Rover Vogue
• Range Rover Vogue Supercharged
• Range Rover Autobiography

 

SECOND

After listing the car and accepting the money, they didn't answer the email for 8 days, very bad customer service.

THIRD

As soon as they listed the car with agreed amount of 89,000 I started getting the recommended price sms, emails and backend notifications to reduce the price to 74,000 as that's the right market price - I am not sure either they were quoting me for wrong Range Rover or they love to brainwash people, so I'd reduce fast and they'd make a sale to get their commission.

Asking seller to reduce 15,000 (17%) from the asking price within 1 day of listing is quite a hit for any car seller, who invested time and money so they can competently fetch the right buyers at fair market price.

Totally Disappointing.

FOURTH

On the day I listed my car with Carswitch, the back-end was showing instant cash offer of 65,000 dhs. After two weeks I reduced to 85,000 to be in line with other used car sites then backend started showing me 56,000 dhs. So that means their instant cash offer is automatically synced with whatever you ask. They will slash 24-29K of your listing price without using any common sense or logic of car depreciation.

So this is basically Sellanycar, Sellcargetcash cloned site but in disguise. 

Totally Disappointing.

 

 

FIFTH

All Google and network adverts they were running were using a wrong title (Vogue instead of Vogue Supercharged) and/or displaying my car with wrong league of competition. Wasting their own money with lack of intelligence or car details.

Why would anyone click on a 85K car if a 67K is there but it's a Sport instead of a Vogue Supercharged ?

Totally different animal and year. Good idea of fetching customers through Google ads, but applied ineffectively.

 

SIXTH

If they are charging 2600dhs commission to run Google ads, then we can also do this by ourselves and get buyers, and only show one car to increase the chances than 3 in a carousel. Probably we will get good potential buyers in 1000dhs ad-spend if you know how to target Facebook and Google advertising with YouTube tutorial in less than an hour and keep on tweaking ad daily.

Again its advertised with wrong title in many places.

Being a Vogue, it's overpriced.
Being a Vogue Supercharged, very well priced.

SEVENTH

Few places ads were running without a title even, and when anyone click on the page it goes nowhere.

Clicking on above Vuukle advert by Carswitch lead to site can't be reached.

https://cat.fr.eu.criteo.com/delivery/ckn.php?cppv=3&cpp=Hb00-FNR-lyMj7QkOlhUWeKm-bSOEXqmAsR349XGq3r5WNdKp6qPMf96mxNmF49hFY_s5gkPMyJc5p5fCfLL3bvnaBj8NpxTV_b8otnwrZ1syUy0K3hNlP77qyb5hI4vzDusBBygYaTmwawLm7JGvkeP6UV0fFVqvb8Pi9nDJMHhXTqdqkQGVOa_c6RW5qtmtuUhZec7O-GLzGJJIoR5bLqZszmaYnLnlqXsefwwqH0Nf4BbnnUMscBsd-CQABiw8pysoxO_NMyUvuHg-YDGduhdRylY-1BKq7qEaNsk-IfvXo6LyPWQcjYr5WABGJHtzmeaJR7-JeXvQjuiBQcG2SKYUYT4tcyTPjCsoP6MreX4Uh1dauI4y3OshBz6SjmhjQEa3g&maxdest=https%3A%2F%2Fcarswitch.com%2Fdubai%2Fused-car%2FRange-Rover%2FVogue%2F2012%2F145739-149420%3Futm_source%3Dcriteo%26utm_medium%3Dretargeting%26utm_campaign%3Dlowerfunnel

 

EIGHTH

After all this ad-spend and showing in their website they fetched 273 views in 1 month, zero calls and zero viewing. I placed same advert in Carnity that has fetched 579 views and 5 calls and 2 viewing from original buyer. I also placed an ad with Dubizzle, Dubicar, Yzer, Yallamotors etc.

 

NINTH:

Their website has no relevant sub category as Vogue, let alone Supercharged, so your ad will always show with low cost, not rightly competing cars when searching with top level car name. So if you have a special type of car or spec, you will lose out even more.

TENTH:

Their website interface doesn't allow owners to edit much of the details and you are at the mercy of back-end operators who don't answer emails and cause delays in selling your car. That's how it took me 8 days to change to correct title to: Range Rover Vogue Supercharged.

Hope this review helps you to save some money and time in false expectations of fetching you the best value - false advertising, when from day 1 till day 25 they were pestering me to reduce price several times and brainwashing me by showing low price cars.

If you don't know the real value of your car, spec, age and km, you might  fall in this trap and sell it for low.

 

 

Finally I sold my "Range Rover Vogue Supercharged for 83,000 AED on 18 Sep 2019.

I had two close offers, one was 82K with a bank loan from Carnity advert and 83K cash buyer from Dubizzle.

 

 

Congrats @Sri on your first official "Newbie Drive" which is a big feather for any Marshal cap to plan and lead absolute newbie drive, which is actually very difficult for many offroaders. You have nicely planned the route and chosen the perfect level at right time from beginning till the end, so that all newbies can learn and enjoy safely. 

You have lead an amazing newbie drive and tbh, I didn't corrected any route and after some time I become lazy and started thinking that I'm following Rahimdad lead.

Well done buddy, we are very proud and fortunate to have you as a Marhsal who can think it through and see things differently from various perspective than just hitting the pedal to find his own way alone.

I agree, if you can get the engine compression test then it's a best way to check.

If you need compression tester, I can give you mine, if you have access to this car in UAE, you can do it yourself in 30 min - 1hr, depending on how deep Nissan have hidden the spark plug.

I can come along too as I have done compression test before and with two its better and faster.

Chinese and Korean - Moderate noise, cheaper price - I used Kumho in my wife car briefly.

Japanese tire - Bridgestone, Dunlop, Yokohama - less noise, moderate price.

Michelin, Pirelli - No noise, most expensive and Michelin has longest usable life.

So if you plan to keep car for 80k kms use Michelin - the best quality rubber for tires, money can buy.

If you plan for 40K - Japanese are good option, except dunlop as they get noisy after half life (20k).

Don't know the korean life, someone can add further on that.

BMW road tire shops, not all of them sell original. So sticking to some known and old tire shop is a safe bet - Gulf coast, Ardh al emarat, formula tires, century tires. 

1 minute ago, shadow79 said:

which lines you want explained...i can elaborate for sure

Fuel line that goes from your tank to the brain carrying green tea

3 hours ago, Rahimdad said:

I had to change a tire rod end in the middle of Sweihan. Thanks to @shadow79 who not only changed the tire rod end but also aligned the tires with a rope in the middle of the desert. When I went to the alignment shop the guy said very little adjustment was required as felt on the road while driving also. I'm a big fan of old book in practice.

Totally agree, I am also big fan of @shadow79 and @Jalil bhai desert services, recovery and jugad.

Old school is always king but in such minute precision and decimal based alignment 3D aligner are far easy, faster and less headache than making 20 trips to explain left and right, then left too much, then right after 3 seconds, and still not sure if it gonna eat tire shoulders or not after a month of driving.

All newbie, fewbie and experts please make sure your car has front and back tow-hooks in properly mounted and ready to use condition, because w/o the tow hook all the knowledge, experience, recovery gears are useless to get you out from simplest of a stuck.

2 hours ago, Syed Ahmed said:

Hi sri this is waseem , shamils friend, have come for many drives with him before, i have a jeep wrangler and yes its equipped with recovery points, will see u guys tomorrow, very excited for the drive😀  

Welcome Waseem to Carnity and its offroad club, finally you made it.

Congrats bro on your new desert toy, looking fwd to see it in action.

CNG fitment makes no difference on engine life, its same as petrol or diesel if that's the exact answer you are looking for.

Now firstly congrats on one step closer to your next offroad toy.

If its imported and not yet registered in UAE I will check the carfax paid version history first to make sure it's not flooded, accidental or stolen vehicle. I meant for major accident, minor ding dang is acceptable. 

If that passes on flying color then visual inspection of engine being a high mileage is first, then transmission, 4x4, diff, suspension etc.

If all goes well then shake it 50 times in negotiation as imported vehicle will never fetch any resale here in UAE and you should buy it with an expectation to drive until it dies mindset.

Waiting for you on Faya, now.

Although mixing is not advisable for all the various reasons mentioned above, but if you are topping up then stick to same quality and spec you should be OK. By quality mean, if you got ENOC most expensive oil, then pick same for Adnoc and not the cheapest one. Reason is most oil companies uses the best chemical additives in their flagship product and they should be at par with industry standard as far as oil spec goes.

I use to have this trouble with my Cayenne Turbo as being a turbo car it needed 1 liter every 1500 km and I use to top up with ENOC fully synthetic "green" oil for 48 dhs/liter. Never had any issue with unusual engine noise or temperature.

If this ENOC and ADNOC oil fusion works for you, do update here as it seems very interesting question to me.

Just now, Frederic said:

Last time I’ve seen a car going up and down like that on a parking lot, there were other things going on 😂

Because life before and after making babies is not too different.

I love reading YouTube comments after watching the video to see the real feedback and sentiments.

Here are few sentiments on new Land rover Defender

10 minutes ago, WiLfY said:

😁 So @Jehand @Gaurav don't like curves. 

Not on "MACHO" 4x4 - Please