2020 Hyundai Tucson Pricing and Specs

When you consider the millions of bumps and jars a car endures in its lifetime of sometimes several hundred thousand kilometres, it’s a wonder they stay together at all. But a rattle somewhere in the dashboard can be a real irritation over time.

There are two steps to fixing this, the first being often the more difficult. And that is locating the source of the rattle. To do that, you may have to remove parts of the dashboard and the media screen itself. The idea is to then drive the car and see if the rattle has disappeared. If it has, you can narrow it down to the bits you removed. If not, you keep removing parts until the noise stops. The catch is, of course, that removing things like media screens may make the car undriveable or unsafe to drive as important safety systems cannot be accessed.

The alternative (recommended as a first step) is to drive the car on a surface that normally produces the rattle, and press down on various bits of trim and fittings to see if that stops the racket. If it does, you then need to pinpoint what’s loose and tighten it, or stuff a piece of foam rubber between the item in question and whatever it’s banging against.

Because you’ve already logged the problem with your dealer, it should be on file as a pre-existing condition. Now that it has become worse, you need to take it back to the dealer and have it checked again. If the dealer won’t look at it for you, you need to do two things. First, have the vehicle independently assessed by a transmission specialist. Secondly, you should take the matter to Hyundai’s Australian customer service division.

The symptoms you’ve described are consistent with problems far too commonly found in dual-clutch transmissions. Shuddering and slow gear selection are far from unknown in this make and model, and Hyundai even had a software update to try to alleviate these problems. At the very least, the dealer could try the new software, but if left unchecked you could end up with a dead transmission that could cost many thousands to replace. So it’s crucial to keep the dealer and Hyundai Australia in the loop to maintain your warranty cover.

Most Hyundai engines with a rubber timing belt require belt changes every 100,000km. Stretching this interval is pushing your luck as a failed belt will destroy the rest of the engine. With that in mind, you’re already over that limit by about 10,000km, so a change sooner rather than later is in order.

The car will, indeed, drive perfectly even with an old timing belt. Until it doesn’t. At which point you have an engine bay full of junk and a big engine replacement bill coming your way.