Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mahindra Classic - Organic Farmer's Jeep

My new avatar is called Organic Former, Oh yeah! I'm a former now successfully done Rice, Sugar cane, Ground nut and now it is mango season. All were in the form of Organic forming.

To my assitance the Jeep really stood along as transporting medium. Last to last weekend I was carrying around 800kg of "Senthura" variety mango from the farm to Chennai's vegetable/fruit market.

I went to the farm and plucked the mangos by hand gathered them into the Jeep Trailer, it took me more than 6 hours with 2 peoples assistance to fill the trailer. By the time we finished the harvesting it was too dark to take pictures. Hence the pictures shows half filled trailer with organic mangos of my farm.


Though my farming was full with organic ideas implemented, the market seems to be looking forward to spoil the corps with various chemical processing. Especially the Calcium Carbide ripening .. which is too dangerous and toxic.


If anyone who reads this thread please understand not a single mango that are selling in Chennai's open market is organic and the ripening process is used with Calcium Carbide stones.

Calcium Carbide when mixed with water produces acetylene which is highly combustible substance and when mixed with oxygen can be used for welding and cutting metals.

Rather said that besides acetylene, ethylene which is also a plant hormone regulator is also produced and this characteristic helps in ripening of fruits. As the science says, Calcium Carbide is carsogenic in nature and it is not in purified form and contains traces of arsenic which too is toxic.

I can supply to those who can buy 50kg or more organic mangos, as the ripening process that I use is the good old home process using the dry paddy grass method.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Mahindra Classic – Jeep Thrills Anniversary

The whole weekend was Jeepers weekend for Indians as the Jeep Thrills (a Premier Indian Jeeper's Club) celebrates its 4th anniversary. Same is the reason for me to be part of the Jeeping activity last weekend.
It was started with workshop on Jeep assembling and parts, Patrick was demonstrating the internals of Jeep to the members of our club and lunch on Saturday, myself and my two pals geared up in my Explorer towards the get together organized in the evening for the Jeepers. We all traveled around 90kms to reach a rustic village, where the whole team planned to stay over night.
For me the first attraction was offroading with Anjan the founder of Jeep Thrills, we have been known to each other for a quite a long time but never did offroading together.
Secondly my two pals (Sharon, I should say a total energetic girl who cheered all of us for the Jeeping exercise and Dominic, a gentleman from Germany as a guest to the event with me.)
I think this is one of the first Jeep Thrills events where a foreigner participated. I hope he enjoyed the offroad event today as he also floated on the Palar river bed with my Explorer.
Thirdly the offroading event conducted on Sunday was on the Palar bed (a dry river that runs across Tamilnadu a state in India); This rever bed is like any other place and just safety for your jeep so you don't damage any parts. Othewise Palar or any other river or desert offroading is not so great to talk about. Since I had my friend from German wanted to play safe today ;-)
Now the actual story about the 4th Anniversary OTR, after our dinner on Saturday we crashed into the bed and the next morning was thrilling morning for me as for the above mentioned reasons. There were ten offroad capable vehicles (mostly jeeps) participated as mentioned below here:

  • Mahindra Classic (1 no)
  • Maruti Gypsy (1 no)
  • Willys MB (1 no)
  • Mahindra CJ340 (1 no)
  • Toyota Landcruiser (1 no)
  • Mahindra MM550 XD (1 no)
  • Mahindra MM540 XD (1 no)
  • Mahindra CJ500D (1 no)
  • Mahindra MM540 DP (2 nos)
The City I stay in India is called Chennai and it has three climates: 1. Hot, 2. Hotter and 3. Hottest. This is the hottest season for Chennai, We really had toughest sand terrain as the river bed was dry, I guess sand offroading suppose to be the most stressful offroad terrain for the vehicle as the engine needs to be keep on pulling the vehicles.
I brought my tyre pressure to 20psi to float on the sand, this was suggested by Patrick. Those who have already familiar with this terrain didn’t wait for reducing their tyre pressure; almost all vehicles reduced the tyre pressue. Hot + tough with no air-conditioned drive made most of our bodied to get dehydrated. The event organizers did plan it well, we had good amount of water and butter milk on the jeeps so we were not down with dehydration issue.
We had powder like sand every where in the river bed which totally took our vehicle engines for a task.
The most difficult part was that we need to climb around 60 degree sand incline. I couldn’t cross this incline with my jeep I given up as my 4 attempts were failed already.
Here the challenges were: 1. Too steep, 2. this is sand incline, 3. the run on space for the jeeps to pickup the momentum is too less. Except the Gypsy, Land Cruiser and MM550 none of us could do it. The reason being the run on distance for Diesel engines was high but we had really little space on the bottom to pickup, but Gypsy being petrol vehicle it picked up really fast.
When we headed back, it was almost 1pm in the after noon and the offroad was really tough and everyone dipped their head into the cold water availed in the location where we stayed. Patrick's son Rufus (14yrs old) was also done a great offroad jeep driving today, Collective video graph of the Palar River bed Offroad event is uploaded to You Tube and same has been posted here:
The anniversary program was turned out good as I also met good number of jeepers and the veteran like Jeeper Patrick. All the participants (like a family) posed for a photo shot and ended the event with smile.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Treating the Trailer – Mahindra Classic

The long story short, My Explorer companion got facelift by adding color to it.

After long thinking, I decided to preserve the trailer’s body state by doing bit of body work. Initially I was not really sure if I wanted to do it now as the recession hit my work industry a lot. (Ok, who cares?)

It was on Saturday I started my trip to my home town, on the way I need to pickup my distant relative for farming ideas. Hence the one way travel extended to 350kms to my home town and 50kms for the farm.

It was fairly a decent drive and the trailer did well with the Jeep. Hmmm I noticed the brand new looked trailer's NDMS tyres started showing its face. Looks like the tyres were unused for a long time and the rubber in the tyres are dry leading the edges of the tyres get broken during the long drive.

On the way to my home town I visited East Cost Road for a minimum stretch and picked up my relative. My trailer visited the “Ayyanar Samy” temple to take pictures; since the ECR is full of beach sand I had engage 4WD in the explorer. Later in the same day I reached my home town with no big troubles and the dawn set to dark. The next day (Sunday), Me, Explorer and the Trailer started our work at 4:00AM in the early morning going towards my farm to pickup around 500kilogram of farm outputs (Rice, Black eyed bean, Chilli and Jack fruit). That was the first civilian load the trailer every carried in its life. I thought it will be a big stresses to the jeep, but my wonder no feeling of any addition.
I reached back home at my native to drop all the goods and took the trailer for the body workshop. This is the same place I did my jeep restoration. Since it was Sunday all of the laborers were on week off. I managed to knock the senior painter and called him to do my work, before that I also did bit of arc welding on the body to hide few small holes as the tinker said it need more time to do pucca job. So welding and metal pasting, though the surface inside the trailer was not made evenly with the way arc welding has done. But it solved my problem.We had tough time as it was sunday and no paint shop was open for us to buy paints. Though I decided to use low cost paint to the trailer, My painter managed knock a closed paint shop and got the paint items he required. Painter started his work by metal pasting followed by application of putty and inner painting (black) and outer painting (red). While the painter colored the trailer with red, the electrical power cut had happen and we had to abandon the job for about 2 hours. The trailer came out good but it was too late the job was completed around 6:30pm and I had to give 4 hours for the paint to dry.Since I went alone, 200kms of return trip without anyone as a passenger in the jeep during night trip with first time heavy towing experience was thrilling. Only I had bit of worry in my mind but the jeep or trailer didn’t show any symptom of the whole story and they sailed on the dark tarred road in the mid-night. First thing today I did was to click few pictures of the trailer for your eyes. The Jeep and Trailer looked as if they made for each other at my home in Chennai. Though the entire weekend was busy for three of us (Me, Jeep and Trailer) the complete plan was successful and we made the restoration of Trailer with time and cost constraints but relatively better job.

Registration number plate, electricals and T board are few missing items on the trailer and it will be carried over to forth coming weekends.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

My Trailer restoration

The trailer is undergoing minor restoration, though there is not power plant for trailer the body needs some minimal attention. As the trailer was parked in the open yards in military space, I thought will do some sand blasting and minimal painting job.
But after sand blasting I found the trailer also needs some tinker job, hence sand blasted and primer applied but no painting. As the recession hit the world and the symptoms are started showing up with me, I have decided to do the painting and bit of word at later stage.

Here is the picture showing my Trailer after sand blasting and primer painting. Njoy!

Monday, March 16, 2009

Trips with Trailer - Mahindra Classic

I have been thinking that I will add a winch, overdrive and Peugeot XD3P 2.5L Diesel power plant to the Jeep. But never thought that I will be needing a companion to the Jeep itself. Though my farm and urban travels are always filled with my rear passenger area of the jeep, I never had an idea of trailer.

In the recent past, I wanted to give it a try to mate a trailer with the jeep. Few of my train travel via. Chennai, Avadi military scrap yard made me think like that. You know what today I own a trailer.

A month back I paid an token advance to take my trailer(Mahindra branded) from one of the army scrap vendor here, however I requested him to assist me for the paper work so the trailer is road legal.

I saw my trailer loaded in a truck, collected few pictures for future reference. Then my rush to know about the trailer gave me mind full of information.



1. Mahindra Trailers are equipped with Break assy. with the hook bar and emergency breaks.
2. Mahindra Trailers got cross bar to manually pull the trailer, this could be folded down when towing
3. Mahindra Trailers are got smalls hooks inside and outer side of the body
4. Mahindra Trailers got tools box on the right side of the outer body wall
5. Mahindra Trailers got Quadrilateral shaped mudguards and box typed mudguards


1. Bantam Trailers got no break assy but equipped with emergency break
2. Bantam Trailers got round shaped mudguard
3. Bantam Trailers got wiring for rear taillamp which could be attached with the Jeep (advantage)
4. Bantam Trailers were easy operatable when taking reverse as there is no breaks attached in the tow bar, the Mahindra's normally hit the break and makes bit tough for reverse operations.

Finally today, it was my towing experience. It was scary and exciting as I'm learning something new.
The first trailer towing experience was bit too long, as I had to tow the trailer for aroudn 30kms in Chennai's peak hour traffic. Unfortunately I had to drive the jeep with trailer during office close time and got stuck in the traffic. The issue came when I wanted to reverse the trailer, woah.. no way I could do the trailer goes on it's own path. I need to learn the tactics of driving the trailer now. Since I was not sure how to reverse the jeep with trailer finally I had to remove it from the hook and manually reverse then got it back to the jeep again.

The trailer has been dropped at my sand blasting unit, tomorrow morning the guys in the sandblasting workshop will do the required work for the trailer.

I hope to pick it up after 2-3 days as my office time realy prevents me going so far during week days.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Mahindra Classic - Engine water pump service

Last week I observed sudden hike in thermal gauge, Initial investigation showed that the radiator water level was bit low, though I used radiator coolant I used bit water to top up the fluid level.

The same day again same over heating issue and water in the radiator was far lesser than what it suppose to be. I was suspecting the radiator and found no leak in it. Rushed to the mechanic and he said there is a leak in water pump and it requires attention. I got a brand new TVS Autolec water pump who incidentally the OE suppliers for Mahindra Vehicles.

Today we corrected the water pump issue by replacing with the newly acquired one. It was in a shocking state when we saw the water pump and most of the water pump body was damaged with corrosion and barely any metal wall was left over.

Picture of engine block after removal of the old pump.

Just for your comparison purpose here is the old and new water pumps next to each other.

This picture shows the engine with newly installed water pump.

Along with today's service, I did change the rear half gate handle, bit of house keeping work for the music system setup and Air-filter intake air hose.

I got some hint from fellow visitor and my references to the mechanic that the distinct sound from my Jeep may be from the Diesel pump nozzle and he urged me to check up before conducting any Engine work.

This is the first day I saw all the four friendly Jeeps came together to the garage, except Mad-Bull Ram who's jeep is parked next to my jeep in the above picture we three had a little chat on jeeps.

The two jeeps in the above picture are Vinod's and Samy's precious vehicles.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Indentifying Mahindra Classic

There are so many queries about Jeeps, many folks turn to me asking for information about the Mahindra Classic. In fact many people think the word classic jeep is meant for the older jeeps. But the term Mahindra Classic is itself a product name and here is the information how to recognize a Mahindra Classic for those who wanted to own the precious and the last produced short wheel base Jeep in the world.

As many as people tried to fake the Classic model with Willys CJ3B, M&M CJ3B, M&M CJ340 and M&M CL340 (not a classic) by adding the stuffs to look like a original Mahindra Classic jeep.

  1. Original classics are CL340 DP - Classic 4WD (Not CJ340)
  2. Chassis number of CL340 DP/4WD starts with CL340DPCLS4....
  3. Produced between year 1996 and 2000 (The first batch of CL340 DP/4WD (M&M Classic) rolled out in Q3 1996 and the last batch of CL340 DP/4WD was in Q2 2000, could be used in conjunction with the RC book)
  4. Suspended pedals for gas, break and clutch (Other jeeps will have floor mounted system)
  5. Front wheel got Disc break (I bet no other jeeps got prior to this)
  6. 1996 to 1997 models came with spokes wheels (Wire wheels) and then Alloy 96-99 Models came with spoke wheels, the alloy wheels were an option from 97-98.
  7. Chrome plated 2 piece Front bull bar(actually the bull bar and cover to the bumper are 2 pieces not like the replicas)
  8. Filmsy dash board with colorful indicator lights
  9. Little wider track than CJ340s
  10. Single lever 4WD operations with KMT-90 gearbox (Old jeeps got shafts for 4WD options plus one for normal gears)
  11. Rear seat setup came with forward facing seats like Willys MB or CJ2A
  12. A nicely designed roll over bar with a little bend towards the sky on the center of the middle pipe.
  13. Seat belts on the rollover bar
  14. Idling speed switch on the dash board
  15. Right to left wiper arms
  16. Plastic Rear spacers are bit wider than the MM540 type spacers (one on the read mudguard)
  17. Front rear spacers with a carving for small side indicator (the smallest side indicator than in any jeep)
  18. Originally availed Red, Black, White and Dark Metallic Green colors
  19. Mesh(or insect shield) on the grill without a hole for bonnet knob (available for MM540)
  20. Front tow hook on the right side
  21. Side view mirrors (OVRM) setup from front of windshield with 4 screw mount each side, inside of the 4 wholes in windshield protected with a rectangle metal plate for extra support. (Not seen in any other CJ3B variants)
  22. Extra Plastics for the location between fascia and the bumper with Mahindra written on it and neat plastic cover for the windshield joints.
  23. Company fitted bucket seats
  24. Ignition key on the steering column with steering lock
  25. Lamda free wheeling hubs as seen in the Maruti Gypsy
  26. Center mounted spare wheel brackets on the tail gate (all other Mahindra models to have it on one side of the door)
  27. Three screw sun wiser attachment on the windshield like MM540
  28. Servo assisted break operations (booster break)
  29. The Emergency break or the Parking break on center of body tub between passenger and driver seats.
  30. The air filter inside the engine compartment was fitted on the left side (passenger side) firewall, as to give space for the servo booster of break assembly in the right side (driver side), hence the air filter intake tube in Classic runs over the engine from left to right.
  31. A prominent logo on the sides of bonnet saying “CLASSIC" and 4x4 on both the sides of rear of body tub
  32. The diesel tank got a fancy cap which had 5 distinct circle kind of design and it was made in France
  33. The diesel tank got a fibre cover to hide from under the passenger seat in the interior
  34. Additional plastic corner covers for front and rear bumbers were made available as extra options from manufacturers
  35. The hood (soft top) had a distinct model compare to other Mahindra vehicles, the model was almost as same to the Tiger top brand of USA. It had 2 piece metal frames one is static and one is foldable with 'Y' shape. The top was also came with soft door wich is not rollable (seen in the previous mahindra models), the doors have also got zipper top portion to look like window which could be rolled down.
  36. The headlight of Mahindra Classic also got a grill which is not common in other Jeeps, it was added to the Jeep's face with 3 bolt nuts.

Allow me to take some time to post pictures for each point wherever possible to identify the Classic.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Thiruporur - mud drive OTR

It's been some time now to write about a offroad that the Explorer had, though a week back I was in the Jawadhu and did the complete offroad in reverse, I didn't write about it as the blog is already seen many posts on Jawadhu front.
Last weekend We had a small OTR(25 Jan 09), It was in the afternoon which started at about 3 p.m and ended by 8.30 p.m We guys met at sleepy looking hotel in the end of IT corridor a place called hotel Harish in Padur on Old Mahabalipuram Road in Chennai. After all of us assembled the convoy of Jeeps headed to Thiruporur the same location chosen for the offroad this weekend, it was a new terrain for me but not for the other Jeepers who were with me.We had couple of Jeeps, Gypsies and Mitsubishi L200 as part of the convoy. After a few kilometers of on road drive, we got into the offroad terrain which splits through a village. We drove through a forest which had lots of eucalyptus trees and bushes. The terrain became wet loose soil one and the 4WD was engaged from there on.

It was quite a tough drive and I was following my friend Vinod who stopped few times to click pictures. He had come with his friend's family hence many more pauses to click pictures ;-). Hmmm I could hear my Explorer wanted me to take him ahead of my friend's jeep and finally it happen to that way.
After passing through the water channel and loose mud we got to stop as the there was a canal which is bit deep and too narrow for crossing, so we split into three groups and started searching for other ways to cross the place. This is where the problem happen to me, I was trying to climb a soft and steep mud wall right from the water channel and failed to achieve, hence I wanted move to the other location but got stuck big time.

As said here I had to reverse instead took a challenge of crossing the rut perpendicular with a steep mud wall. god stuck royally. As you can see from the picture below the later maneuvers took the jeep to the edge of the mud wall. bushes made the headway impossible, and the branch of the tree which was on the mud wall damaged my soft top and lost the front parking lights already. I had to roll the windscreen down and remove the top to prevent any further damage. In the process finally with the help of a Gypsy without any additional damaged I came out but couldn't prevent damaging the tail lamps.
During the scene we used Manpower to rescue another gypsy which got stuck where no other vehicle could reverse and position itself. The trail was amazing and it really a feist for our four wheel drive enabled vehicles.
After couple of hours of offroad, we were intend to get out of the trail through a lake bund. By the time my turn came it was already bit late evening and the dawn is out of the sky. I switched on the head lamps and guys shouted at me to switch it off as to save some power. The Explorer is without doubt one of the best performing Short Wheel Base jeep. I faced least problem in clearing the bund though this activity required some tough maneuvering. The bund lead us to crossing the embankment through fields to the main road.
As a whole it was another great Jeeping Weekend, and the week started with restoring the damaged that was caused to my Jeep. By the time when I was writing this blog the jeep is all set ready with new lamp assembly and stitched soft top.