My 2019 Kia Forte has 34,000 miles and I haven’t had any problems with it. I took it to the local dealership for routine maintenance and they recommended the fuel service and brake fluid service. I know better and I did it anyway.
They told me my car was ready and I paid for the services. I went outside to get the car which wasn’t there and the service advisor told me there was something wrong with my car, that the techician was cleaning the fuel line and reset a code and they were on the phone with Kia. Ten minutes later she told me that now my car wouldn’t start. They got me a rental car and they called later to tell me I needed a new engine. I asked for more information and they told me when the technician “stuck his bore scope in cylinder one he noticed that the piston in cylinder one has come in contact with the cylinder head” and essentially my engine was faulty and I’m lucky they discovered this.
I paid for the extended warranty so I won’t have to pay for the remanufactured engine they said they’re going to install. I think they’re lying to me, though, and in trying to get to the root of what happened, now (2 weeks later) they tell me my car started to fail during the road test and that the fuel service didn’t cause this “as the fuel service does not mess with the internals of the engine.”
I probably didn’t need to explain all that to get to my questions so excuse the venting. My questions:
Could the fuel service mess with the internals of the engine?
Does anyone else have experience with something like this? I searched and found a few related issues but they were over 10 years old so I’m looking for something abbit more recent.
+1
In case the OP doubts that reality, he can take a look at this settlement, in which KIA confesses to having built bad engines: https://kiaengineclasssettlement.com/
Free engine and probably a free rental car for at least 2 weeks. Don’t worry about it and who cares if they are lying? It doesn’t cost you anything. We had a similar experience with a 2003 Olds Silhouette. The transmission gave out at 56,000 miles and we had a 60,000 mile/ 60 month warranty. Free transmission and care rental. If I were in your place, I’d consider selling the car in the next couple of years and use the engine replacement as a selling point. Surely a nearly new engine in a 5 to 7 year old car is a selling point. Oh yeah, I don’t think they are lying since it’s covered by the warranty.
Car 1 has a replacement engine because the manufacturer installed known problematical engines and it was replaced under extended warranty due to no fault on the customer’s part
Car 2 has a replacement engine because it was poorly maintained and the customer had to pay for the replacement and installation
Agree, an engine replacement would be a red flag to me. But just in mu opinion I think they could be fibbing. Fuel treatment gone bad and hydro locking a cylinder? Good luck with the second engine but remember it’s not new but remanufactured which means at one point it was in another car before being torn apart. Would I be pleased at 34,000?
Thanks for the replies so far. I ought to have mentioned in my original post that I know already about the Kia engine problems and about both of the settlements. The 2019 Kia Forte hasn’t made either list, however. And if the service department had told me from the start my car engine started to fail during the road test, I might have believed that it was a fluke coincidence this happened under their care.
It does matter to me if they’re lying. I don’t trust them now to do any more work on my car including installing the replacement engine. I will never feel safe driving that car again. And when I told the dealership 3 days after this happened that I was interested in trading in the car for a 2023 Kia Forte, they offered a trade-in value $2000 below the KBB trade-in value for my car in “good” condition. And my car was in good condition before I brought it to them (2 quartersize bumps on the trunk from a bike rack stopped me from saying it was in very good condition). [Edit: since learning more about the Kia engines, I’m no longer interested in buying a 2023 model.]
I hear those who wrote to take what you get and be thankful (and I’m sure other posters may say the same). And maybe you would do that if you were in my position. And I may have no choice but to do that. But for now, I’m trying to get answers to the questions I asked in my original post. Thank you.
There is no way of knowing unless one of the guys confesses. So no point beating your head against the wall. Get the new to you engine and go trade for something else. If they offered $2000 less than trade in, it might be that the dealer needs to eat part of the engine cost due to shop error.
Plus, a Hyundai mechanic on another forum claims that because H/K is stingy on pay for warranty work, many techs do a sloppy job of installation, omitting shields, not properly torquing bolts, etc.
So don’t count on that replacement engine being “factory fresh”.
If I ever have to get engine replacement on my Tucson I’ll take it straight to Carmax and sell it.
Yes, the fuel system service could destroy your engine if so much entered that one cylinder that it hydrolocked. Injector cleaning fluid can’t be compressed so it breaks the piston, rings or bends a connecting rod.
That’s a good point. But there’s not much you can do about it, other than tooling-up & learning how to repair and service your car as a diy’er. I can vouch this works, as me how I know? … lol … If that’s not possible, which it isn’t for most car owners, suggest to enjoy your rental car for a couple of weeks until you get your own car back with a replacement engine, then skip the recommendations for proactive fuel system service. .
You could ask that your own mechanic be allowed to inspect the original engine. Absent that sort of independent inspection , there’s no way to know if the fuel injection cleaning treatment is related to the engine failure. I’d give that theory a 50/50 chance, equally likely it did, or didn’t.
Technically yes, depending on how it is done… I knew a ASE certified mechanic that blew his own engine up doing his own FST that he had done hundreds of before on customer vehicles… Yeah he was an idiot!!!
That being said, As already stated in above post, Your engine was junk before you took it in for service and it was about to fail anyway… Lucky for the dealership, it blew up on them so they didn’t have to pay for a tow… lol
EDIT:
And I would hope that having to replace an engine with hardly any miles on it due to a very well known crappy quality built engine, you have learned not to buy another Hyundai/Kia vehicle… If you do decide to buy another one then we will be glad to help you out again…
