My All-New Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire ZDi (AGS): Ownership Review

[fusion_defusion]

I had planned to do the 30k service last Friday while i did gave it for service but a major issue surfaced the night before when I was driving back home. I was cruising on 5th gear at 80kmph merrily, suddenly i heard two short bangs and the car lost the pickup followed by large turbo whistles every time i used to press hard on the accelerator. I realized that there is some issue with the turbo. The worst thought came to my mind is turbo is kaput. Nevertheless i somehow reached home with a limped turbo. I thought of popping the hood up and see what is wrong but then thought tomorrow I anyways I am going to the service station for the paid service, so dropped the idea. The next morning i pressed the engine start button and it refused to start. It used to crank and fire up but after 2 seconds used to sleep, i tried atleast thrice and then thought not to do any fancy stuff and call them to tow the vehicle. Before that would happen i just popped the hood and to my surprise I located the fault. The intercooler pipe came out of the intercooler assy. The retaining strap/pin was missing and the pipe was hanging loose.

I fixed the pipe back and then tried to start her. She was alive again. Now that i solved the issue the only thing remaining was to tell them to fix a new metal strap/pin to the pipe. Attaching the pic for reference. When i gave for service i asked them how can this happen? never happened to my Ritz. They obviously had no answer. One guy was even speculating that I revved to much which caused this, ill educated moron. Now the car is fine and they fixed a new pin. The only thing worries me now is, can this happen again? or what caused it?.

 

[Volksjäger]

I had planned to do the 30k service last Friday while i did gave it for service but a major issue surfaced the night before when I was driving back home. I was cruising on 5th gear at 80kmph merrily, suddenly i heard two short bangs and the car lost the pickup followed by large turbo whistles every time i used to press hard on the accelerator. I realized that there is some issue with the turbo. The worst thought came to my mind is turbo is kaput. Nevertheless i somehow reached home with a limped turbo. I thought of popping the hood up and see what is wrong but then thought tomorrow I anyways I am going to the service station for the paid service, so dropped the idea. The next morning i pressed the engine start button and it refused to start. It used to crank and fire up but after 2 seconds used to sleep, i tried atleast thrice and then thought not to do any fancy stuff and call them to tow the vehicle. Before that would happen i just popped the hood and to my surprise I located the fault. The intercooler pipe came out of the intercooler assy. The retaining strap/pin was missing and the pipe was hanging loose.

I fixed the pipe back and then tried to start her. She was alive again. Now that i solved the issue the only thing remaining was to tell them to fix a new metal strap/pin to the pipe. Attaching the pic for reference. When i gave for service i asked them how can this happen? never happened to my Ritz. They obviously had no answer. One guy was even speculating that I revved to much which caused this, ill educated moron. Now the car is fine and they fixed a new pin. The only thing worries me now is, can this happen again? or what caused it?.

Sorry to hear this and I can say that it is a common issue. They always blame the customer for it. Under normal revving my Swift DDIS TGR pipe came loose leaking coolant. In a span of 6 years I changed it thrice. Due to coolants heat, the hose pipe used to expand over time and under normal revving the TGR pipe used to slightly eject out of the plastic inlet pipe and it starts to leak coolant. The third time it happened, my fav MASS mechanic used silicon bond (sticky black stuff) and a clamp to fix it. Since then it never happened, its just the poor quality parts used by MSIL causing such things to happen and if neglected that can lead to major problems. Thanks for sharing. Keep us posted about such incidents. It is really helpful for all prospective buyers.

 

[fusion_defusion]

Thanks and yes as promised i will be updating the thread regularly. Speaking of which, I forgot to add this note earlier. During this service the egr was cleaned as a part of scheduled maintenance. When i took the delivery of the car my dash clock was reset and so did my audio settings, I asked the SA why did this happen and he said that battery -ve terminal as to be disconnected before carrying out EGR cleaning and which resets this settings. But what he forgot to mention which I think must have happened is, the AMT is also reset. Why i feel this must have happened is, the shifting pattern feels like stock, it revs and shifts earlier or beyond the timings which I was used to. I was just going through this post on another forum that the so called TCM unit learns your driving style and then adjusts itself to it refer to the post where someone has attached some excerpts from a manual(Maruti's AMT woes - Page 7 - Team-BHP). So what I think has happened is, it unlearnt during the reset and is starting a new chapter again.

 

[fusion_defusion]

Crossed 40k mark. Had done my 7th service since purchase just before my recent trip to GOA. Total expenditure was around 7k with all the fluids replaced. No major issues(fingers crossed) getting a mileage of 24+ kmpl on highways and around 22 kmpl with city+highway mixed. There is a slight judder when moving quickly from stand still but is live able and does not happens too often.

 

[Tarik Arora]

Crossed 40k mark. Had done my 7th service since purchase just before my recent trip to GOA. Total expenditure was around 7k with all the fluids replaced. No major issues(fingers crossed) getting a mileage of 24+ kmpl on highways and around 22 kmpl with city+highway mixed. There is a slight judder when moving quickly from stand still but is live able and does not happens too often.

You seem to be munching miles pretty quickly. How is the cabin holding after 40k kms? Any rattles so far? My Zest XMA recently underwent the 90k kms service along with clutch replacement. Surprisingly the clutch for AMT costs much more than MT (i always thought that AMT & MT share the same clutch). Clutch pack was about 8k and labour was additional (3.5k).

 

[Volksjäger]

Crossed 40k mark. Had done my 7th service since purchase just before my recent trip to GOA. Total expenditure was around 7k with all the fluids replaced. No major issues(fingers crossed) getting a mileage of 24+ kmpl on highways and around 22 kmpl with city+highway mixed. There is a slight judder when moving quickly from stand still but is live able and does not happens too often.

Does this judder happen when you give a quick tap on the accelerator and wouldn't happen when if given in a slow and linear manner ? Say after crossing a speed breaker or going on an incline with bumper to bumper traffic and you need to stop every now and then.

My celerio judders very badly in the above situations and some times even in the creep mode without giving accelarator.

 

[fusion_defusion]

You seem to be munching miles pretty quickly. How is the cabin holding after 40k kms? Any rattles so far? My Zest XMA recently underwent the 90k kms service along with clutch replacement. Surprisingly the clutch for AMT costs much more than MT (i always thought that AMT & MT share the same clutch). Clutch pack was about 8k and labour was additional (3.5k).

Yes considering my daily office run is about 70 kms to and fro. Cabin is still holding strong, the weather strips have started to squeal a lot so I apply Vaseline every 15 days to keep this squeal under check. Apart from that no major issues.

Does this judder happen when you give a quick tap on the accelerator and wouldn't happen when if given in a slow and linear manner ? Say after crossing a speed breaker or going on an incline with bumper to bumper traffic and you need to stop every now and then.

My celerio judders very badly in the above situations and some times even in the creep mode without giving accelarator.

Yes during quick tap but not always I think it more has to do with the clutch assy temp. On shorter runs it never judders but on a long drive of about 6 hrs+ it does but not a pronounced one but a little. Though it never juddered in the creep mode. Celerio I think has this issue from the start and Maruti must be doing something to have that sorted soon.

 

[Volksjäger]

Yes considering my daily office run is about 70 kms to and fro. Cabin is still holding strong, the weather strips have started to squeal a lot so I apply Vaseline every 15 days to keep this squeal under check. Apart from that no major issues.


Yes during quick tap but not always I think it more has to do with the clutch assy temp. On shorter runs it never judders but on a long drive of about 6 hrs+ it does but not a pronounced one but a little. Though it never juddered in the creep mode. Celerio I think has this issue from the start and Maruti must be doing something to have that sorted soon.

My celerio was driven for 10k+ kms in 3 years time and I know that it has very low running for a 3 year old car and the car started to judder from 6k kms but back then I really didn't know how I should drive an AMT, got irritated and gave irregular accelerator inputs. But now, I know how to drive an AMT to prolong the clutch life. Got my clutch pack changed, 1500/- for clutch plates and 1500/- for labour, will upload my service bill soon, I was surprised to know the price of the clutch plates. And at this rate I can change the clutch pack every 10k kms for a judder free drive. It has been 3 days since I got my car and I have driven the car very extensively on very steep inclines with B2B traffic and in hot weather with AC on all the time and not once the car has juddered. So I am actually very happy with the car. The trick to prolong the life of the clutch is to be easy on the accelerator and understand the shifting patterns of AGS and release the accelerator when shifts are about to happen and again give a gentle accelerator to keep moving forward instead of slamming the accelarator for pick up. I think AMT owners already know this. I was happy for 2 reasons, one is, I also have an Alto K10 MT and even though the clutch is light and gear shifts are butter smooth, I know how hard it is to drive in traffic or on inclines, we need to modulate clutch and accelarator but celerio AMT is doing that without a judder now. Second, my celerio costs just a lakh more than Alto AMT and at this price point I can't really complain because I don't mind changing the clutch pack every 10k for 3k rupees considering the cost of Torque converter/CVT replacement to the north of 3 lakh rupees.

Here you can find the cost of Torque converter unit of the Grand i10 and I understand that Torque converters are extremely reliable and smooth but in India it is hard to find people who can repair/rebuild a TC unit. They can last more than a lakh kms but on the downside, it gives poor mileage and costly to fix. But if given a choice and keeping the money factor aside I would any day put my money on the Torque Converter unit over an AMT.

https://www.99rpm.com/hyundai/torque-converter-box-grand-i10.html

Now considering the cost of AGS unit @ 75k and clutch pack @ 3k, I can get back the car back alive from juddering like the way it drove on day one. But definitely an AGS transmission won't have the smoothness of a TC or CVT, but it is anyday cheaper to maintain and less time consuming to repair.

 

[Volksjäger]

Here is the cost of the clutch replacement as part of my 3 year service. Don't get shocked to see 11k bill, since I changed all the fluids and some parts, the bill got inflated.

 

[Volksjäger]

Here is the cost of the clutch replacement as part of my 3 year service. Don't get shocked to see 11k bill, since I changed all the fluids and some parts, the bill got inflated.

If you look at my bill they replaced the engine oil with Semi-Synthetic oil 5W-30, but as per my manual it is 0W-20 which is a mineral oil. And now a days not all MASS workshops stock fully synthetic oils. I spoke with the works manager and he said that they are okay to replace the oil if I get my own. So next time I am gonna go with fully synthetic oil which is 0W-40 for my celerio petrol.

@fusion_defusion I highly recommend that you replace your engine oil with fully synthetic one in your next service which is 5W-40. Which costs 1000/- a litre and if they do not stock that oil then you can buy it from Amazon or from reputed stores and get it changed at MASS.

 

[Volksjäger]

Crossed 40k mark. Had done my 7th service since purchase just before my recent trip to GOA. Total expenditure was around 7k with all the fluids replaced. No major issues(fingers crossed) getting a mileage of 24+ kmpl on highways and around 22 kmpl with city+highway mixed. There is a slight judder when moving quickly from stand still but is live able and does not happens too often.

Hi fusion_defusion, I think your Dzire ownership has crossed 2 years by now, Congratulations! How is the car and how is the AMT holding up? With the soaring fuel prices you must be happy with your purchase. Torquey and frugal DDIS coupled with a convenient and cheap to own transmission.

 

[fusion_defusion]

Hi fusion_defusion, I think your Dzire ownership has crossed 2 years by now, Congratulations! How is the car and how is the AMT holding up? With the soaring fuel prices you must be happy with your purchase. Torquey and frugal DDIS coupled with a convenient and cheap to own transmission.

Hi,
Sorry for delayed response, yes the car has crossed 2 years and 52K on the odo. The AMT is showing some sign of clutch problems. It now judders during cold start. I am experiencing this from 2 weeks now. When the ambient temp is below 25 Deg C, it judders a lot and if its around 27-30 deg it doesn't judders, gradually the juddering reduces as the system heats up, at its max operating temp, it then goes away until it cools down again to below 25 Deg C. The situation gets worse on inclines when the system is cold.


I am going to show it to MASS this weekend. The problem is only when its cold and usually never until the next day.


I will keep you guys posted.

 

[anshuman8]

^^ In general how the car has behaved with AMT box ? Since Diesel already had turbo lag with AMT do you fell pick up is less in 1st gear or during overtaking in Auto mode ?

 

[fusion_defusion]

^^ In general how the car has behaved with AMT box ? Since Diesel already had turbo lag with AMT do you fell pick up is less in 1st gear or during overtaking in Auto mode ?

It downshifts to lower gear when you tap hard for e.g. when overtaking, so no problem. When in 1st gear the torque is at its peak so it does not matter if the turbo has kicked in or not.

 

[Volksjäger]

Hi,
Sorry for delayed response, yes the car has crossed 2 years and 52K on the odo. The AMT is showing some sign of clutch problems. It now judders during cold start. I am experiencing this from 2 weeks now. When the ambient temp is below 25 Deg C, it judders a lot and if its around 27-30 deg it doesn't judders, gradually the juddering reduces as the system heats up, at its max operating temp, it then goes away until it cools down again to below 25 Deg C. The situation gets worse on inclines when the system is cold.


I am going to show it to MASS this weekend. The problem is only when its cold and usually never until the next day.


I will keep you guys posted.

First, let me thank you for the update. As per my experience goes, it is the issue with clutch plates. I guess clutch plates have got woren out. The juddering is more related to the clutch than the AMT actuator functioning. During cold conditions the only thing which I observed is that amt takes some time to shift and once it gets warm it becomes normal.

They will mostly change the clutch plates to solve your issue. I suggest that you also change CLUTCH COVER along with your clutch plates which is very important. Because hydraulic clutch actuator exerts pressure on the clutch cover fins to push the clutch plate in place to transfer the torque. So by now, the clutch cover has got exposed to a lot of wear and tear.

Second get the gearbox oil changed.

Get the AMT oil checked and top up if needed.