Thomas Varghese

Kindly disregard me as I found a spot in @Lorenzo Candelpergher's drive tomorrow

Same here @JeromeFJ. I left @Ale Vallecchi's all day drive and joined here as I found this drive has less people and @Lorenzo Candelpergher may need all the help to keep this newbie convoy moving.

I wish somebody will take a break in between so that I can click another sunset picture like this.

Dear Doc Kindly put me in some corner where me & my X can just hop along happily. Last weekday newbie drive you had managed a pretty long convoy without any trouble.

Waitlist me please @Chaitanya D

@Zixuan Huang - Charlie your car was kind to you and loved you that he didn't strand you inside the desert. Atleast it ran to reach your home

@Anish S if you don't attend to this ASAP we will find you soon kneeling down in the front of the car, hands in praying position and wishing the car would just come back to life and help you get out of the desert. The car would just not even respond to your prayers saying you didn't take care of the symptoms he has shown you. I hope you will have a good F 150 or similar trucks in the convoy to tow you out of the desert to tarmac. It happened to me once. The battery died suddenly and nothing could make the car come back to life. You think jump starting would help but sadly it won't. I found out later that to jump start such a car you need to connect 2 car battery's so as to overcome the shorting inside the cells. Electricity will be happy to flow through the least resistant path which is the short itself and no current will reach your starter motor to crank. Its electricity's law. Only other way to jump start then will be to completely disconnect the terminals and connect the jumper cables to the terminal cables directly and once your car comes back to life you can reconnect the battery and exit.

Please check the volt meter reading when the engine is running. If its more than 14.2 V or less than 13V then definitely the alternator is going through a slow death. Check the battery voltage when the engine is off. If its less than 12V then the battery is dying. Both of these can cause terminal corrosion. As its a sealed Amaron battery there is no reason for you to fill the battery acid and cause this and hence can be ruled out. You said you noticed it recently which means definitely either the battery or the alternator is dying off. If your car has done anything above 150000 kms probably the carbon brushes of the alternator has worn out and a good electrician can replace the brushes. Can be your battery is reaching the end of its life too if its too old.

Overcharging your battery can lead to terminal corrosion. Moreover, if you overcharge your battery, it will result in a heat up. Also, it turns your battery into a kinetic energy storehouse. As a result, your battery expands in volume. Consequently, there is an electrolyte push out. This push-out occurs in both flooded and sealed battery types. It can find its way out through the vents or any cracks in your battery.

I have a feeling you should check your alternator output as this looks like the alternator is putting out more than what is needed for the battery which means its slowly dying off. Just a hunch.

I missed the drive 😥

Dear All, My drive description was just humorous. Actually it was one of the best drives I had till now in Carnity. It was fun, safe and quite adventurous. Cars getting mechanical troubles into a drive is not unusual. This is not a drive on the tarmac but inside one of the harshest environments on the planet. The most important aspect of the drive was it was executed with total safety in consideration when crazy drivers in ones and convoys were driving like mad men all over the place. Everytime we encountered a rash convoy we stopped at a safe place and allowed them to pass. In terms of level it was a notch above IM drive scaling each and every dune in Badayer area. The convoy responded very well by doing what was asked of them. Looking forward to more drives like this which will make me understand my car and its abilities more.

By the way even after clearing the code the car didn't rev up until the throttle body relearning process was done. I'm not an expert on OBD2 readers.

A good OBD2 programming computer should cost upwards of 7000 AED. Normal ones can tell you the problem but is not much help to programme the ECM

Yesterday during my drive with @Luca Palanca Falsini @Shaaz Sha my Xterra went into limp mode towards the end of the drive. The car wouldn't rev beyond 1000 rpm. Morning I got back my car after an ECM programming and everything works fine. The mechanic told me this happened due to constant acceleration and deacceleration of the car for a long time. I thought the explanation was bizarre and checked with @Frederic and he concurred on my Mechanic's observation. I still didn't believe both and consulted Nissan and they confirmed its a known fact for Nissan throttle bodies. Historically all Thomas's are doubting Thomas's. Well all the Xterra owners out there in the club - @Chaitanya D, @Foxtrot Oscar, @M.Seidam, @Tbone, @Rizwanm2, @Shaaz Sha, @Chinthaka Ruwan, @Brendan White , @Xavier Treasurer, @Janarthan, @Mukundan Nair beware this can incapacitate your X in the middle of a drive. Be careful. Kindly tag other Xterra owners who are unknown to me. As per Nissan once the throttle body motor cools down the car should rev up again but it didn't happen yesterday and @Russ had to tug me out. My mechanic said once the check engine light comes on it cannot be back to operational status until the code is cleared and throttle body is programmed. Side note:- On the brighter side my X seems to give a better gas mileage after the throttle body programming.

any chance I can join? sorry too late. Disregard my request

The relief is mine @Russ. I was worried if I could take the car out. Knew it was do able but wanted the perfect driver and the car to do it. Well you were the handyman. Thanks for your help in tugging it out. I think we pulled it out almost 3.6km as per my odometer and please its no small feat. The driver of the pulling car and the driver of the pulled car has to think alike and match each others moves like a dance. There was only 1 fear I had, sometimes your pull was little more hard and I was afraid one of our tow hooks may tear off. I think very soon you will master this art too. Its no small feat that we achieved. Regarding safety features of @Carnity drives I agree with you 100%. I have never seen any other club follow safety from the 1st line to the last line like our club. Sometimes I feel whole carnity is about driving in the desert safely which I like. That's why I didn't give in to other club temptations and stayed back. Once again thank you @Shaaz Sha, @Luca Palanca Falsini, @Russ and @Abu Muhammad for the wonderful experience you gave all of us.

@Russ was perfect in his 1st drive after being selected into the support team.

Thank you @Chinthaka Ruwan. My car is ready now. It seems the throttle body motor went haywire with all the hard acceleration. After getting it reprogrammed the car is okay now. Good that it stopped before I created an accident as the whole brake fluid container was filled up with sand after the cap flew away mysteriously. Cleaned the master cylinder, all the brake lines, and the calipers, flushed it and refilled it with brake fluid. You should be able to get a 2nd hand starter motor for less than 200 AED from Sharjah BMW road. I replaced mine last week along with an alternator and the driver side power assisted window motor - all for 500 AED. If any assistance required call me on 0552690503. The starter motor doesn't die a sudden death. The symptoms would have been there since some time. Hope the recovery I arranged for you didn't take long to reach you.

Thank you @Luca Palanca Falsini & @Shaaz Sha for a wonderful drive. There is not even 1 bowl in Badayer we have not visited today. Even though it was @Shaaz Sha's 1st drive as a lead it was wonderful. No doubts at all for him where he was going. He was driving as if he knew the place thoroughly. It was action packed from the word go. The drive started with @Chinthaka Ruwan's XTERRA sensing it was about to be subjected to extreme torture, gave up and refused to start up. He hopped on to the adventure with @Russ in his F 150. Good for @Chinthaka Ruwan as at least he could witness all the adventure. My X also couldn't cope up with the extreme climbs sometimes and had to be really persuaded with a hard whip to gallop away. @Shaaz Sha guided us safely through extreme traffic in the dunes amid some crazy drivers coming our way with help from @Russ who was sweeping. Everybody drove very well through the entire drive as was expected from an IM convoy. Almost 3/4th into the drive @Abu Muhammad's car got tired of climbing and climbing and became hot with anger and refused to go further. @Abu Muhammad finally gave in to his car's wishes and sadly took him home with the help of @Luca Palanca Falsini & @JeromeFJ guiding him. Abu tried his best to persuade his car to stay but the car wished otherwise. See you soon Abu. After Abu's exit it was my X which refused to go further. After one of the endless high speed crisscrosses my X just stopped running. Looks like something went wrong with the throttle body assembly and is now under repair thanks to the extreme pulls by @Russ to take him to the exit where a recovery was waiting for us to cart him to his garage. Russ is the man and F 150 is the car. What power that car has to pull my almost dead car all the way to the exit. Wish I could buy 1 of that car soon. @Abu Muhammad as the CF and @Russ as the sweep did an extremely well support role right from we started the drive. As I mentioned before everybody performed almost well to what @Shaaz Sha had in his plans to take us to every dune in Badayer. @Javier Lucero, @JeromeFJ, @Alain Canivet-Abikhalil, @Amir Amiri , @Ranjan Das & @Rawad see you all soon to drive another day. It was my honor and pleasure to be in the company of such exemplary drivers and their capable machines.