[Lowflyer23]

I feel sorry for your friend as everyone might not be aware of the issues of Hyundai/Kia group. As rightly said by a fellow BHPian they are giving the fancy gizmos the regular public adores and are cutting costs in the mechanicals.

I have first hand experience of this poor quality of Hyundai as I took my friend's Creta over a pothole at 50 km/h and ever since there is a prominent rattle near the driver's footwell area. Not hiding or covering up my mistake or lack of judgement but trust me I have done much much more hilarious pothole miscalculations on our 2013 EcoSport and there is not even a single rattle anywhere and everything is stock.

[vk007]

Originally Posted by ZenMaster

I'm quite taken aback by a lot of the "sarcastic" responses almost making fun of the OP or rather his friend for buying the car and having to go through this harrowing experience which would be heartbreaking to the owner.

Completely agree. Sarcasm aside, we should genuinely feel for the customer here. Imagine his joy of buying a new car turn into this nightmare.

Kia owes the customer an apology and a new car. I really hope they do something about this and quickly.

[kedar_GT]

Thank god that the occupants are safe and this did not lead to a disaster. Totally agree with you that this is unacceptable in a new car (or for that matter an old one either!). Hopefully, this is a one-off case and not a problem with a batch from the supplier's end.

I am sure the Kia/Hyundai PR machine is scanning this thread to check the reactions on this one before deciding the response. After the GNCAP rating fiasco & the braking hardware issues, they would not want to add "such" feathers in their cap.

I was of the belief that Hyundai/Kia products manage the fine balance between quality, reliability and VFM. But the 'quality' has turned out to be just a 'perception', the reliability factor has taken a hit with these incidents and the VFM has been thrown out of the door a while back with the pricing of the top-end variants.

Cheers

[arjab]

Originally Posted by Slickshift99

Hi Team,
My close friend got the delivery of his Brand New Kia Sonet HTK+ petrol on 20th December 2020. Yesterday on the 27th of December while his father was driving the car, the engine mount broke leaving him stranded along the road. He says the car hit a small pothole and weird rattling sounds arose from the engine bay.
Looking forward to your valuable inputs on what should be done further in the matter.

Thanks.

Regrettable incident which should not have happened under any circumstances in any vehicle. Engine and transmission mounts are designed to last the lifetime of a vehicle as it is a critical part and should not fail at all. During the deign phase itself all mounts undergo rigorous CAE / CFD simulations to determine its failure point.
This is definitely a case of a faulty manufacturing batch of "A" mounts produced by the vendor.
Having said that,

1) Document the failure in pictures, as you have done.
2) Track, record and document the entire rectification procedure including any hogwash the dealership may try to feed you. Just remember that an engine "A" mount, as in your cars's case, cannot fail just by dropping into a pothole!
3) Check the front right driveshaft very carefully. Particularly the gearbox end. As the engine has tilted, it has also shifted down and slightly to the right, away from the centre-line of the vehicle. This puts a strain on the driveshaft ends, which if not checked can pop-out later. Suggest telling the dealership to at least open and refit the right front driveshaft and change the retaining circlip and "O"-rings.
4) Check all AC hoses. As the engine tilted, it may have pulled or pushed some of the aluminium AC plumbing, causing it to misalign from its original configuration.
5) On a similar vein, check all rubber hoses and wiring harnesses. Basically, run a check on every component attached as a peripheral part on the engine's right side, as they would have borne the brunt of the sudden collapse of the mount.
6) Check for misalignment of the water pump, main crank, alternator and HVAC compressor pulleys. Also check the belts for frayed/scuffed edges.

Do not hurry to take delivery. Do not sign the dealership "WORK COMPLETED OK" receipt at the time of delivery as the dealer would probably press you to do it.
After the repair is finished I suggest, you drive the car over varied terrain for at least 50 kilometres, the way you normally drive and also give it the stick a bit. Garage it. Drive it again the next day to listen / feel / smell any untoward noises / vibrations / burning odour etc.
Only when you are convinced, that things seem alright , may you sign the vehicle delivery receipt.

Keep all failure related documents safely. Maybe it would be a good idea to e-mail them to some higher authorities in KIA SERVICE as a matter of keeping things on record.

Drive safe!

[RiderZone]

I think it'll be a good idea to do a poll where people can answer Yes or No if they have had any serious issues of this kind with their Hyundai/Kia cars.

All companies have some problems with their products, but the number of complaints against Hyundai/Kia, and the extreme gravity of the complainants (brake failures and such) is going beyond "normal" in my opinion.

I don't know much about cars, but I've been recommending the new i20 to family purely based on my own analysis of what you get for your money. But these kinds of safety issues are very very disconcerting.

A poll will help figure out what percentage of Hyundai/Kia owners actually face major troubles, that'll help quantify the probability of it happening to you.

[SulemanP]

Indeed Hyundai/Kia do a lot of part sharing they are # 2 in the market and that is applicable to part failures too! there is a thread by @crazy driver on this. Nobody would really expect part failure especially in a new car, it badly reflects on the OEM image. As rightly said by GTO they do have QC issues…

[venkyhere]

Originally Posted by DeathPig

Could this be due to KIA pushing cars off as fast as possible to meet the burgeoning demand their vehicles have? The mount seems to have sheared right off at an angle. I'm not familiar with metal working/breakages at this scale. Is this how it usually happens?

This is due to nothing but sourcing steel from the cheapest vendor - "It's for india, let's be as thrifty as possible. Our PR and legal will ensure that failures/deaths can be blamed on poor infrastructure. It's for india, man"

[ownerofazkaban]

Sorry to hear on this incident, please get it fixed and move on to enjoy the new car. This is really sorry state of affairs of component localisation and even after a decade things seems to going only downhill. My Figo had RTB (rear twisted beam) replacement and it was a country wide recall by Ford and they replaced the RTBs with new supplier imported ne. If I recall the cracks need some special spray to detect and faults cannot be determined by naked eye inspection.

As an engineer, Apologies to all for sorry state of affairs! Felt really bad going thru the thread and your experience on brand new vehicle.

[shaheenazk]

Originally Posted by Slickshift99

Hi Team,Yesterday on the 27th of December while his father was driving the car, the engine mount broke leaving him stranded along the road. He says the car hit a small pothole and weird rattling sounds arose from the engine bay.Thanks.

It proves the build quality of these new age, flashy, feature and gizmo laden cars is nothing to write home about. No wonder Seltos got just 3 stars by GNCAP. Wonder how safe Sonet is.

[gkveda]

Originally Posted by ownerofazkaban

Sorry to hear on this incident, please get it fixed and move on to enjoy the new car.

Cannot agree more with ownerofazkaban

Think the episode as It is just some part failure and needs replacement.

If you start thinking that hyundai quality deteorated or you have got cheated or you have got a lemon, or your decision of choosing the car was wrong, you may get some temporary support for your grief but the cost for it will be, in long term you will lose your wonderful experience with the car.

Forget about the incident after it is fixed and start enjoying.

As they say, happiness is not what you are, what you have, what you do or what you earn. Happiness is what you think. So, think you have a wonderful car and start living your life.

All the best for your driving passion.

[gauravanekar]

Hyundai-Kia has taken the task of upping their game on all fronts. Be it increased production volume, factory floor expansion, moving up the automotive value chain (Santro to Creta), dealer network, engine-transmission options etc. I would expect them to drive cost saving measures internally too.

One can only concentrate on few core areas at a time, with so many things to juggle obviously the company is failing to cover its base in terms of Quality-Durability-Reliability. What the organization needs at this point of time is a quiet lull from new product development projects for at least 2 years and focused Quality improvement projects.

[gmhossain]

Originally Posted by arjab

3) Check the front right driveshaft very carefully. Particularly the gearbox end. As the engine has tilted, it has also shifted down and slightly to the right, away from the centre-line of the vehicle. This puts a strain on the driveshaft ends, which if not checked can pop-out later. Suggest telling the dealership to at least open and refit the right front driveshaft and change the retaining circlip and "O"-rings.
4) Check all AC hoses. As the engine tilted, it may have pulled or pushed some of the aluminium AC plumbing, causing it to misalign from its original configuration.
5) On a similar vein, check all rubber hoses and wiring harnesses. Basically, run a check on every component attached as a peripheral part on the engine's right side, as they would have borne the brunt of the sudden collapse of the mount.
6) Check for misalignment of the water pump, main crank, alternator and HVAC compressor pulleys. Also check the belts for frayed/scuffed edges.

Thanks Arjab for pointing out the specific parts that one should look for possible misalignment/damages during the repair process. Given the engine was revolving/revving while it got dislodged from the mount, I presume, it will impact/strain almost every moving parts connected to the engine.

Do you think such impacted engine/driveshaft/car combination will ever run smooth as earlier?


Thanks,

[bkc]

Originally Posted by vk007

Kia owes the customer an apology and a new car. I really hope they do something about this and quickly.

Apology, repair and more extended warranty is fine but asking for a new car is little too much. They are here for business and wouldn't have put that part, if they'd known it would fail.

Slightly OT.
All professionals work is to find loopholes and look that the business is profitable. Some examples:

1) Lawyers work is to save his client by using loopholes or twisting different laws.

2) Corporates have financial teams to find tax heavens and use all the available subsidies, multiple company names etc.

3) How many of the citizens show full income? including those earned as bank interest in their savings account?

4) How many of us pay gst for all goods purchased??

5) How many of you constructed your house, by paying gst to your contractor?

So, as long as the laws are not stringent, people find ways to maximize profits and just pass the current regulations (About the safety of cars). The Mount failure can be a manufacturing fault of just one out thousand mounts, manufactured by a supplier. Each mount cannot be tested but, one randomly selected ones might be selected.

My engine mount bolt failed in swift after a lac kms. Bolt is not a casted part and I was too shocked. But doesn't mean my car is unreliable.

How many of us can swear by the Germans, after paying big ones for it?

[Almoral]

Originally Posted by arjab

Regrettable incident which should not have happened under any circumstances in any vehicle. Engine and transmission mounts are designed to last the lifetime of a vehicle as it is a critical part and should not fail at all. During the deign phase itself all mounts undergo rigorous CAE / CFD simulations to determine its failure point.
This is definitely a case of a faulty manufacturing batch of "A" mounts produced by the vendor.
Having said that, please...

<snip>

...Keep all failure related documents safely. Maybe it would be a good idea to e-mail them to some higher authorities in KIA SERVICE as a matter of keeping things on record.

Drive safe!

Really detailed list of things to be checked. I think the OP will find it really useful.

On a separate note, i10 Nios was in my shortlist for a new Car. But, reading the threads where we have such failures in Hyundai/Kia, I will probably not go with them (at least until they acknowledge and take some steps to fix such issues). This is really sad because 2 of my close friends have older models of i10 and they never had such issues. As someone else mentioned may be they are finding it difficult to address quality issues in this phase where they have increasing their market share rapidly.

[venkyhere]

Brand bashing or siege mentality or one bad apple (or lemon sample) used to generalize the entire lot ..... all comments to this effect that are present in this thread aside,

there are categories of issues/problems that can seek haven in the excuse of "random fault that simply can't be detected, because the root cause is 'random' in the way atomic/molecular level physics/chemistry works". These are, for example :
- hardware failure due to cosmic rays or a random gamma particle striking a silicon atom and converting a 1/0 into a 0/1 - a problem due to a limit on the level of accuracy that can be achieved with the way silicon is purified and doped and then made into semiconductor chips.
Even in this case, the industry has been clever enough to build redundancy into the circuits/storage so that software errors do not occur.

And then there are issues/problems which simply don't have such an excuse to begin with :
The aforementioned 'redundancy' is the simple/elementary "safety factor" about which we learn as students. Say a beam or pillar of a building requires X dimensions to support the weight above it, it is given 2X or 3X or even 4X size to counter against non-uniform loading (say 300 people stand in one room in one corner of the top floor, which is meant to accommodate only 30 people) and against material quality variation. If such safety factors are ignored, high probablity for the problem to bite back. This is exactly what happens when beaureacrat-contractor corruption nexus results in bridges and buildings built with bare minimum quality and quantity of material and one fine day, when the loading reaches an extremely rare combination, catastrophic failure ensues.

I am not trying to reduce this to a 'safety factor yes/no/how much' problem, only trying to lend a flavour to the perspective with which such issues must be seen. "Vendor side quality issue present in one batch" --- simply is unacceptable when it comes to structural components. And engine mounts are not like injectors or fuel pump or clutch disc or anything electrical. It is part of the "fundamental structure". Taking recourse in the civil construction example from above, it is like the 2nd floor's floor falling down on the head of people in the 1st floor. It is that fundamental. Design specifications from the manufacturer provided to the vendor has to ensure that even if the vendor doesn't stay within the quality tolerance limits , there is enough "redundancy" in the design to circumvent it. How do you think engine mounts in millions of other cars are not failing even if the person driving it, drops the car at 140 kph into a sudden mega pothole ? is it because the vendor who supplied those mounts is the same guy who supplies parts to NASA rockets ?

There are issues/failures which can take recluse in "random" and then there are ones which simply can't. Engine mounts belongs to the second category.