Kia Problems

You’ve paid for a car with a factory warranty, so make the most of it. The first step is to have Kia look at the car, listen to the noise it’s making and come up with a plan from there. Convincing the dealership mechanic that there’s a noise that shouldn’t be there might be difficult, but you could also have the car independently inspected (try your state motoring club) the noise noted in writing, and present that to Kia as a way of proving there’s a problem.

In our experience, Kia has been pretty good at getting this stuff right and keeping its customers happy. So start with the dealership and if that doesn’t work, you can contact Kia’s Australian customer service department. After that, it’s a job for the ACCC, but it shouldn’t come to that.

The bottom line, however, is that this car is (or should be) still under factory warranty, so it’s Kia’s problem to sort out; a process that should not cost you anything.

It kind of goes against the grain a little, but there’s a valid case for listening to your friends and mechanic and driving the car until it stops. Since your car is worth – based on average asking prices – about $10,000, you could easily overcapitalise on a new transmission.

The best advice is to have it checked over by a transmission specialist who will know what to look for based on the symptoms they see. You’re right in that a bad pothole could have damaged a drive-shaft (or a wheel, or suspension component) and the torque converter is also a candidate to produce a fault in the way the car drives. On the flip-side, you might simply find that a service and change of fluid brings the transmission back to full health. Meantime, I’m not so sure about rebuilt transmissions not carrying a warranty. Australia’s consumer law suggests that may not be the case.

The Kia Tasman was named after Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the man credited as the first European to 'discover' Tasmania, after who it is named.

It’s important to differentiate smoke from water vapour when it comes to problems like this that may not be a problem at all. Given you’re also seeing water being emitted from the tailpipe, I’m tipping that this is all happening when you first start the car in the morning.

The fact is, this is perfectly normal behaviour from a conventional engine and is simply the engine doing what it does. The water and water vapour is visible on these colder mornings we’re experiencing right now in Victoria because the exhaust isn’t yet hot enough to turn it to steam (steam is actually invisible, water vapour is the white mist you can see). As the car warms up and the exhaust gets hotter, it will turn the water into steam and you won’t notice it.

But how does the water and vapour get into the exhaust in the first place? Believe it or not, water is a natural by-product of burning petrol in an engine. And until the engine and exhaust are hot enough to turn that water to steam, it’s visible to the naked eye. Which is when a lot of people start to get worried. But they needn’t, as it’s nothing to be concerned about.

The flip-side is if the tailpipe is actually emitting white or blue-ish smoke, at which point you potentially have a worn or damaged engine. This will happen regardless of whether the engine is hot or cold and it won’t go away once the engine is warmed up. If that’s the case, you need to have the engine compression tested by a mechanic as the first step towards finding the cause.

This is a really topical question right now as EVs that are actually rated to tow decent loads start hitting the market. The EV9 with dual motors has a large, 99.8kW battery and plenty of power and torque, making it, on the surface, perfect for towing duties.

Without a trailer hitched up, our testing has showed the big Kia uses about 21 to 22kWh during mostly open-road driving. But experience on EVs generally has shown that towing anything really bumps up the energy consumption and slashes range (which is an official 505km for the EV9). Hook up a really heavy trailer (and 2500kg is getting up there) and you might just find that your effective rage falls to about 200km or maybe even less if you’re not super careful with the throttle pedal.

Ultimately, it will all depend on ambient temperature, driving style, cruising speed, trailer mass and the overall aerodynamics of the loaded rig. Suffice to say, the turbo-diesel is still the tow-car of choice at the moment.

You could certainly have the vehicle’s battery packs tested for efficiency by an independent test centre. But why not keep that option up your sleeve and let the dealership test it initially? I would imagine the battery’s performance and efficiency test would involve a written report which is much more difficult to fudge than a verbal report. If the dealership can’t provide this written proof on the battery’s condition and you still believe you have a problem, that’s when you play the independent-test card.

The most commonly reported problems with the Kia Stonic are loud engine noises and rattling.

It doesn’t matter whether you have the two-litre petrol, 2.4-litre petrol or the two-litre turbo-diesel engine in your Sportage, they all use timing chain technology rather than the toothed rubber timing belt. As such, the timing chain fitted should be good for the life of the engine and should not require periodic replacement as a timing belt does.