hi guys. so here i m once again after two very eventful days with regards to my car. kind of long story but i will try to keep it short somehow. so here it is
Yesterday morning, i took the car to the Honda guys again (for the third time) and told them to resolve the problem of that sound coming from underneath. i made sure i was there at 9 in the morning so that they receive my car as the first car of the day and dont have lame excuses of having too many cars to look at in parallel. but i somehow sensed that they were not in the mood to address the issue, yet again. so, meanwhile they were looking at my car (looking only i guess), i went upstairs and asked the customer support guys to take me to the senior most person available in the showroom. they guided me to a guy and i narrated the whole story, and also told him that i dont think something is gonna happen even today. well, nice of him, he accompanied me downstairs to the workshop, and to the perfection we reached at the EXACT time when the testing guy brought the car back and said "sir jee yeh tau normal gear kee awaz hey" and he demonstrated by releasing the clutch suddenly in the first gear and that "thud" sound which offcourse every car on earth makes. i started laughing and requested their boss to accompany me for the test drive, alongwith the test driver. surely, when i drove the hell out of the car, the sound started coming to which thankfully both guys agreed.
well then...they took the car to the general repair (they call it GR) and there they tactfully started adjusting the car here and there. i kept on telling them that guys PLEASE dont release the accelerator as the car will cool off and that sound wont come anymore but they dint listen to me. anyways, they lifted the car with that slow-mo hydraulic jack of theirs which again took ages, so resultantly when the car was up there, and when they shook the exhaust assembly, no sound was coming (i have mentioned in the previous posts that the sound ONLY came when u drove the hell out of the car, for fun, for emergency, whatever may be the reason). so the test driver guy turned towards me and said "sir mein tau aap ko pehlay hee keh raha tha koi awaaz naheen hey" ....and that...was...it.....within one microsecond, i lost it, and opened up a huge vocabulary of ____and ___ and ___, shouting at the top of my voice. i dont even have the words to explain, but guys trust me, it was very very VERY bad, which they richly deserved. so i told them "guys, let me make it very simple for u. either u guys are fixing the car today and hand it over to me, OR u guys are keeping it with urself and put it right, no matter it takes a week or a month. call me when its ok, and i m not paying a single penny for its repair. and let me see you guys not putting i right. i wud skip honda atlas from the chain and straightaway contact Honda japan, and the consequences thereon will not be my responsibility". then i made the test driver guy sit with me and took him to my decade old awesome trusted mechanic and took the car to the drive in pit (the one which is used by the wheel alignment guys....at the same level as that of the road so there is no time wasted by raising the car up and all) and told the macho guy to get down and shove his fat a s s in the pit, shake the exhaust pipe and listen to the dam sound. and he was like "oh yes yes...now i can listen..u r right". well i came back ad shunted them all again. that was the perfect catalyst. in a moment, there were like 9 guys under the car, a series of test drives, opening the whole exhaust starting from the headers, part by part, testing, cleaning, this and that. so much so they even changed the whole assembly with another honda city parked over there which had come for denting and painting and actually THAT was the real diagnostic. the problem was with a metallic ring which was in between the 2nd and 3rd stage of the exhaust. its job is to keep the both parts apart, keep a lil distance between them even if the car is super hot and the metal has expanded a little bit. the ring, for some reason, wasnt doing its job. so they changed it, under warranty, and the matter was resolved
PS : they told me on the last test drive that IF the problem is of the catalytic converter, it will not be covered under the warranty and i wud have to pay for the replacement part, which would cost me like 50k rupees. i was like "dream on guys. a car driven for 5000 km and i pay 50000 rupees for it while its absolutely under warranty, over my dead body" . so they go like " but sir its blockage is related to the poor fuel, not our fault" . i told them " brother...even if u urinate in the tank day and night and dont put ANY petrol in it, even then the catalytic converter can NOT be blocked within 5000 km of a brand new car, so stop f u c k i n g with me and find the REAL problem"
PS 2: after one of the failed test drives, they told me to keep on sitting in the car so that i keep on pressing the accelerator while they were raising the car on the hydraulic lift. i took few snaps while being in the car and posting them for fun sake
Day two...today
took the car today AGAIN to them for another minor sound which was coming from under the hood. it was a litle dugg dugg sound when the car is in the first gear and negotiating a rough or uneven patch of road, as if something is loose under the hood and hitting something. so the moment they saw me, they all started smiling and started looking at each other, as if to say "no bro...i am not going near this customer"....so, i carried the mood from yesterday and said " stop smiling guys...either u smile OR u frown, my complaint HAS to be addressed. so stop wasting ur time and get on it" . meanwhile i had already met their boss and they had seen me coming out of his office so they couldnt dodge. lol. anyways, today was an easy ordeal. they took the car for a test drive with me, brought it back, tightened few bolts of engine mounting and here and there, and the matter was resolved, again offcourse free of cost
PS : yesterday, i got free at 5 in the evening, starting from 9 30 in the morning
so in the end, all ended well now the car is perfectly OK and back to its best