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Due to recent infrastructural development and emerging competitive automotive markets, there is seen a huge shift in customer’s demand and vehicle drivability pattern in commercial vehicle industry. Now apart from ensuring better vehicle durability and best in class tyre life and fuel mileage, a vehicle manufacturer also has to focus on other key attributes like driver’s safety and ride comfort. Thus, for ensuring enhanced drivability, key parameters for ensuring better vehicle handling includes optimization of bump steer and brake steer. Both bump steer and brake steer are vehicle’s undesirable phenomenon where a driver is forced to constantly make steering wheel correction in order to safely maneuver the vehicle in the desired path.

Buses have been main means of mass transport in organized as well as unorganized sectors in India. Though the art and science of Chassis Designing had been practiced and matured by all Indian OEMs, Body design had long not been accorded high priority by them. Till 1989, there was no comprehensive set of rules enforced. Bus designs were developed with scant regard for safety and emission. OEMs sold their products in the form of drive away chassis and the Body Design & Body Building was largely left to Body Builders, many of whom employed poor design, build and quality control practices. Spurious materials, parts, non-uniform construction resulted in number of accidents and many of them were fatal. Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR) kicked-in 1st July 1989. With roll out of CMVR, various safety related features like entry/exit door, emergency exits, window frames, their locations, dimensions and designs were defined.

With advancement of technology, better safety and higher vehicle reliability is primary requirement of end customer especially in public transportation. Hence there exist challenges in design and development of steering system for long haulage and tipper application. In the steering system, track rod is used to steer both the front tyre under different operating condition assisted by power steering system. This paper deals with the failures observed on track rod in long haulage and tipper application with loading conditions. Also the methodology adapted to resolve the field failures.

The Indian automotive sector is experiencing a major shift, focusing predominantly towards the levels of quality, reliability and comfort delivered to the customer. Since the entry of global players into the market, there is a rising demand for timely product launches with utmost priority to reliability. In any vehicle, engine isolation systems play a critical role in isolating the engine vibrations from the vehicle chassis. This project details on how testing can aid in reducing the launch time as well as estimating the reliability of the component when used in a different application/vehicle. It proposes a methodology to formulate a life model for the engine mount considering various combinations of predictor parameters affecting its performance over its design life. In order to maintain good correlation with the field (which considers the loading pattern and the environmental factors), warranty data was analyzed and the predictors were chosen appropriately.