The Elusive Full Beam

OK, I have news and not a great one. I am frustrated. Simply, the 4 headlamps of Vista dont necessarily translate to better night vision of the road ahead. The headlamps suck, and bigtime. Yesterday was my 4th Visit for the same issue. Instead, now, the low beam alignment is also gone and high beam continues to focus on tree tops. I feel the previous alignment was better!

Very frustrating. Night time, i dont think i can cross 40-50 KMPH safely. The other problem is, headlight alignment switch only applies to low beam and not to high beam.

Next service, I will give it another shot. If these guys (Concorde) are not able to do it, I will take it to AutoMatrix and give it a shot.

My experience yesterday was sub standard too! I go to concorde and the security tells me to pull into the workshop. Cars are parked so hapizardly, that to reach the workshop I lost 20 mins from the entry gate. When I reach workshop, they just ask me to drive to QRS (Quick Repair Service) bay for which I did not have to drive through all this mess. Finally once I am in QRS, the guy tries to adjust beams and screws up low beam as well. I was able to realize only when i drove in the night that it was messed up. He claimed that it was perfect now.

Whoa.. I think following are the options in front of me:

1. Give two more tries to have the headlights focused and aligned properly - one at concorde and one at AutoMatrix.
2. If that fails, I have two options:
2a.Go for some really powerful foglamps (is that what you call them? the ones installed on the bull bar like Hella etc)
2b. Go for a mod on the original and get a pair of projector headlamps.

- Aravind

Summary of Issues and Good things faced so far in the One Month of Ownership

Issues First:
- A/C Vent not moving up and down - Fixed
- Grinding noise from Front right wheel - Fixed
- Dashboard plastic sheet has come off - New Issue, will fix in second service.
- Full beam is a sore point in Vista. The headlamp level adjustment is only for low beam. All my enthusiasm about 4 headlamps fizzled out because the full beam adjustment is still not to my satisfaction. Even with 2 or 1 person in the car, the full beam will blind the pilot of the aircraft flying in the sky but not light up the road ahead. With 4-5 persons, dont use the full beam, it is of no use. This is a very very irritating thing for me, because spotting a speed breaker at 80 KMPH in the night and slowing down in time is simply impossible with these high beams. I think H4 bulbs are better or TATA should have head lamp leveler adjustment for full beams too.


Good Things:

- Good riding comfort
- Ability to take on bad roads
- Feels stable at 140 KMPH (on a straight road)
- 80 - 100 KMPH feels stationary and absolutely free of stress
- Good mileage
- Super duper A/C which chills in peak summer.

Tale of 140 KMPH, One Grounding and Dashboard Plastic

On 31st Mar, my drive to sullia was progressing as usual. Suddenly my wife tells me to take a look at the speedometer and the speedo is showing 140 KMPH. RPM is 3000+ . But car was stable and did not realize that we were cruising at 140.

FE from that trip (90% A/C) was 18.9 KMPL. In the previous trip, my nephew and niece wanted to play in the river at Sullia and i was ferrying them to the river. I drove over a sand dune and lo, the car scraped the ground right at the center, but luckily on the frame where the jack is normally placed. Thanked stars for that.

Hmm, Now to the "niggling" issue: Yesterday I observed that the dashboard plastic (black color) has come off from the dashboard. I realised that the black plastic feel of the dashboard was achieved by gluing the black textured plastic material and was not part of the mould itself. Will have to fix this in the next service (5000 KMs). Car has already clocked 3300 KMs in one month.

So far so good, nothing major to worry about..

- Aravind Kamath