Engine failure after dealership did Turbo oil line recall.

[Shawn St-louis]

Hello all, I've had quite the stressful week, I'll try to make a long story short.

2018 GT limited with 99000km

Two weeks ago I had my usual garage do an inspection on my car, it's out of warranty and I wanted to see if anything needed to be replaced/repaired.

After the inspection, the only thing that needed to be replaced was the water pump.

Since there's no aftermarket water pumps here in Canada, I had to go the dealership route and oddly enough changing the water pump there was cheaper than my usual garage. I also figured they could do the turbo oil line recall.

Fast forward to the day I picked up the car from dealership with the water pump changed and the recall done.

A few days after that and about 60km's since the repair/recall. I'm on the highway and my car goes into limp mode. I pull over to a safe spot and pull the engine codes. This is what I got:

Pending Fault Log
------------------
P0016: Crank-Cam position correlation
P0024: "B" Camshaft Position - Timing Over-Advanced or System Performance (Bank 2)
P0300: Random/Multiple Cylinder Misfire Detected
P0301: Cylinder 1 Misfire Detected
P0303: Cylinder 3 Misfire Detected
P0305: Cylinder 5 Misfire Detected

I contact the dealership tell them what happened, they pay for my car to be towed to them to get diagnosed.

Their diagnosis? Out of the 6.9l of oil, there was only 2.9l left, there were no signs of any oil leaks and now they say there's a knocking sound coming from the bottom-end.

Obviously, they were the last ones to touch my car but they're denying responsibility.

Part of my garage's inspection checklist is to check the oil (that's basic) and they confirmed the oil levels were good.

Sorry if this story was still kind of long. I'm so discouraged right now.

What the heck happened? Human error at the dealership?

 

[ThomasNelson]

Oh man. I feel your pain. I just today had this same recall done on my 2019 GT Limited (3.3L twin turbo).

I waited so long to do this for two reasons, perhaps the same reasons why you waited too: I wasn't noticing ANY oil loss (or oil smell) from the seal, and I wanted to let the techs get thoroughly familiar with the procedure on other folk's cars before working on mine.

The Service Advisor said that after completing the work they would add 25kms to my mileage in order to test things. So when I picked up the car afterwards, I took it for a short drive while monitoring oil and coolant temps, since both of these fluids are partially drained to do the recall. My temps were the same as before, so I finished my drive, and then checked coolant and oil levels once the car was cool. The levels were unchanged from before.

I can only offer (and perhaps you can already tell) that I don't trust other people working on my cars, dealerships definitely included. I have many stories that I could tell, but the sum of my experiences inexorably led me to this place. I do as much work as I possibly can myself to allay this paranoia. Since you have a code reader maybe you are similar. Per the person there when I picked up my car, this job uses only ~$80 in parts but 5 hours in labor, so I wasn't really keen to tackle it myself.

Given my lack of trust, I'm not optimistic that you'll get a sympathetic ear. Paying them to rebuild your engine is a whole new exercise in trust. Getting a third party to put a used one in ... more trust. So like I say I really do feel your pain. I truly wish I had some magic words for you to try on their Service Advisor or Higher Up, but I don't. I just didn't want to leave crickets as a response to your appeal for help.

I think others could benefit if you post how all this unfolds - but would totally understand if that wasn't where your heart is.

 

[Snicklefritz]

I would have offered this earlier but missed this thread.

Of course they are responsible. You checked your levels. You drove and suddenly blew over half of your oil out. Obviously something that they "tightened" up failed. I also want to know how this story goes.

 

[Shawn St-louis]

To all who are interested, since my original post, I've tried my hardest to convince the dealership that they are at fault. I've spoken multiple times with the director of service and operations, neither of them are willing admit that they caused the engine failure, instead, they are casting doubt on my garage that did the inspection, "did they really check the oil?". I told them they didn't check the oil either!

Their attitude and actions are exactly why everyone cringes when they have to bring in their car for a recall at a dealership.

This past week, I had the car towed to my garage for them to assess the damage. The initial assessment was that there's either a bent rod or a damaged rod bearing. Fixable but that would cost me 6000$ CAD.

I still have a case open with Kia Corporate, I'm not letting them off the hook, they will pay for the damages. There's no way I'm paying for their negligence.

I'll try to keep this thread updated.

Thanks @ThomasNelson and @Snicklefritz for posting your thoughts!

 

[Alpinesting]

Same old same old with KIA dealerships. You roll the dice and hope that they will take car of your

car and then they let you down. There is a huge disconnect from KIA/Hyundai service departments

compared to Genesis dealerships and that sucks because the Stinger is just quite frankly a Genesis.

But for some reason this auto group continues to treat owners who want to take care of there cars like

trash. I feel fortunate that we have a KIA dealership near us that knows what they are doing but that

confidence is unravelling fast after what you have posted.