2016 Hyundai Creta P AT head gasket fails in just 40,000 km

If it’s the negligence of the Hyundai service centre during the AC repair job that has caused this failure, shouldn’t Hyundai fix this under a goodwill warranty?

BHPian Abhinav667 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

We own a 2016 Hyundai Creta Petrol Automatic that we bought new, which has just touched 40,000 kms on the clock. The car is sparsely used for inter city highway trips for the most part and has been diligently maintained at the local authorized Hyundai service centre in Rishikesh. When we bought the car, we went for a Hyundai with a torque converter automatic + a naturally aspirated engine, hoping for solid reliability compared to something like a turbo + DSG combo from other brands that we preferred more. We also picked Hyundai, assuming a lower cost of ownership over the long term, as we like to usually keep our cars for a very long time. However, our Creta has been anything but reliable to own and the out of warranty repair costs are quickly starting to get silly.

Although we love our car and my local service centre support is superb, the reliability with the car over the last year has been atrocious, needing repeated visits to the service centre, and resulting in enormous repair bills.

ISSUE #1

At around 35,000 kms last year, the air conditioner conked off on a highway drive from Rishikesh to Delhi on a hot summer day in May. The car was handed immediately to a Hyundai dealer in Delhi, who diagnosed it as a compressor failure. They changed the compressor, along with all the other components in the AC system, such as the cooling coil, and the total bill came up to Rs. 41,000/-. This already seemed ridiculous on a car with such low mileage, but I have seen countless Grand i10s/Xcents/MK1 Cretas with their dashboards out at Hyundai service centres over the years with this exact issue. So I almost feel like this failure was inevitable – Hyundais of this era are extremely prone to AC issues.

ISSUE #2

Following this, the car had a full service just 900-odd kms later back home in Rishikesh at 36,000 kms on the clock. This was however 3 months after the AC repair and we noticed the exhaust had developed a giant rust hole at the back – another common issue with Petrol Cretas of this era. Replacing the rusted section of the exhaust was suggested by the Hyundai service staff, and it was another 5-figure part replacement that was quoted. The replacement exhaust section was however not available at any of the Hyundai service centres or warehouses nearby, and we were not keen on driving around the car with a boomy exhaust for too long. So we eventually got the rust spot welded by a local repair shop, and then had the exhaust painted in an anti-rust coating from the Hyundai service centre.

ISSUE #3 - The Big One

These niggles on a car with such low mileage were already quite frustrating, but sadly that’s not the end of it. The final gut-punch was delivered to us recently at the 39,500 mark with a head-gasket failure. The Hyundai service staff says this will require opening up the engine to fix it. The repair job was quoted to us at roughly Rs.60,000, as a lot of the components will be replaced in the engine and the head too will require skimming. How an engine at just 40,000 kms requires such an extensive repair is simply incomprehensible to us, and it just shows that the quality of components being used by Hyundai are extremely poor. 

The car is driving normally and we haven’t had any overheating whatsoever from the engine – the temperature gauge is something I constantly keep an eye on. However, there are some tell-tale signs of an issue in the cooling system. For example:

1) The radiator tends to go completely dry randomly, despite there being plenty of coolant in the reservoir. If we top-up the radiator, it pushes the coolant back to the expansion tank upon running the engine and eventually goes dry again. This leads to the reservoir being overfilled and it slowly spits all the excess coolant out. The local Hyundai service centre has topped up the radiator twice, only for it to be bone dry again the next day.

2) Even upon parking the car aside for a couple of days after driving, if you open the radiator cap on a cold engine, it burps out air, and spits out coolant from the expansion tank.

3) During cold starts, there is a sound of water gushing out from behind the dashboard. This was the first sign that we picked on. I took the car to the Hyundai service centre immediately, and they just topped up the radiator and sent me on my way again.

4) There was an odd smell from the heater and air-conditioner the first time the radiator went dry.

The local Hyundai dealer kept the car with them for a full diagnosis, checking for error codes and such from the OBD port, and monitoring the thermostat and fan operation, but found nothing wrong there. They eventually got back to us and diagnosed it as a head-gasket failure.

The service staff in Rishikesh also suggested that the AC repair done in Delhi last year may have been the culprit for this failure. They suggested that while disassembling the dashboard and the AC components for the repair, the coolant from the hoses must have leaked out while they were disconnected, which was not re-filled. This would’ve caused the engine to run with no or low coolant, resulting in it to overheat, and eventually cracking the head-gasket.

I called the Hyundai service centre in Delhi to re-verify whether the coolant was topped up after the AC repair, and they said it wasn not. The repair invoice doesn’t mention it either. The service manager justified it by saying the coolant lines have nothing to do with the AC repair, and therefore there was no need to top up the coolant, which is why it was never done. Besides the car was serviced shortly after in Rishikesh, during which they should have checked the coolant levels according to him. He also said the car would’ve never made it back to Rishikesh if there was low coolant.

For a second opinion, we also took the car to another Hyundai service centre in Dehradun and told them about the issues we were having. They said the car was perfectly fine, and only needed a new radiator cap, which was faulty and was causing the issues we noticed. The new radiator cap temporarily fixed the issues, but the signs mentioned above have slowly crept back again, pointing to it indeed being a head-gasket failure.

What should be the next step here? Spending 60k on an engine repair on such a low-mileage car seems ridiculous. If you combine the cost of the AC repair done in May last year with the repair suggested here by Hyundai, that’s over Rs. 1 lakh worth of repairs in a span of a year, on a car that’s clocked just 40,000 kms. Besides, if it’s the negligence of the Hyundai service centre during the AC repair job that has caused this failure, shouldn’t Hyundai fix this under a goodwill warranty? What good is getting my car serviced and repaired through the official outlets if the quality of work undertaken is this negligent?

Besides, even if we shell out for the repair, what’s the guarantee the car will continue to be reliable post this? Is owning a Hyundai just an endless money pit? We have been considering adding another Creta to the family, however this has seriously soured our experience of owning a Hyundai and is making us seriously re-consider our decision.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.