I have a Kia Rio5, 2006. Been pretty happy with it overall, but it has an intermittent electrical problem that I’m trying to solve before the warranty runs out.
On several occasions while on long trips, or within a couple days of a long trip (long trip = 10+ hours driving for 1+ days), the headlights have failed to turn off when I turn the car off.
Now, one of the features of the Rio5 is that the headlights are supposed to turn off automatically even if you leave the headlight switch in the on position. You can get the headlights to stay on by turning the engine off but leaving the power on, turning the lights off, then turning them on again.
Unfortunately, the reverse does not work to get the headlights to turn off when I am experiencing this electrical problem. Instead, I have to turn the car on, drive it around for at least 10 or so minutes, then shut it off again.
Other electrical issues that might be related:
The alarm (horn beeping and headlights flashing) has been triggered twice. On both occasions, it continued for over 15 minutes.
The first time this happened, a neighbor where I was visiting came over to complain/inform us that the alarm had been going off for a while, so I went out, started the car, then turned it off, and the alarm stopped going off.
The second time, my landlady noticed only at the point that the flashing lights were rapidly getting dimmer and dimmer. By the time I got out to the car, the battery had been drained and needed a jump.
Additionally, on one of my longer trips in the car, the left front speaker lost considerable power.
After looking at some service data for your car it shows versions with and without DRLs. The headlights are turned on by making a switched ground connection for both versions. The version with DRLs shows the ground for the lights running not only to the light switch but also to the DRL module and the ECU. Without DRL, only the ECU is connected along with the switch. From your statements about the trouble it sounds like the trouble is with some sort of control module. If you have DRLs then it could be the DRL module is the trouble source but it could be the ECU module also. If you don’t have DRLs then the ECU is the only choice.
Since you are having intermittent problems with the alarm system also I suspect these problems may be due to something wrong in the ECU. If that is really the case you surely want to get this fixed before the warranty goes away. Since you can prove there is a problem with the lights by turning the ignition off and on along with the lights the service department will have something to go on. Who knows when the trouble occur on its own. Before they will change anything out they need to see it is bad.
The audio problem with the left front speaker may be due to a bad connection to the door speaker so check the wiring in the door jam. My van had a loose connector there for the same kind of thing and the dealer service couldn’t find the trouble. After several visits for equipment replacements I had to find and fix the trouble myself. I just pushed the connector in the door jam in more. This problem should be under warranty also so have them look at it and fix it.