Kia Sportage Engine 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 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.

The Kia Sportage sold in the US certainly did have its share of problems. In some cases, the engine failures were traced to a faulty batch of engine bearings, in others, a leaking oil sump was blamed for allowing too much oil to escape, leading to oil starvation which destroyed the whole engine. Kia’s fix for the latter condition was to fit an oil-pressure warning light with a more proactive trigger-point.

But it’s dangerous to assume that the same make and model sold in the USA (or anywhere else) will have the same problems as Australian delivered cars. Often, even though they share a brand and badge, the cars from different markets are built in different factories and use parts from different suppliers. Sometimes there are major mechanical changes to cope with local conditions and tastes which can lead to very different reliability outcomes.

That said, however, the Theta engines used in local Kias have been problematic for some owners and catastrophic engine failures are part of those. You could talk with Kia Australia’s customer service division about financial assistance with the cost of repairs, but at nine years old – even with relatively low kilometres – there would be no guarantee of that happening. 

Try a Toyota RAV4, Mazda CX-5, Kia Sportage, or Subaru Forester. Any of them would be good choices.

There are three engines available in the 2018 Kia Sportage: a 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with 114 kW in the SLi, Si Premium and Si, a 2.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with 135 kW in the GT-Line, and a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine with 136 kW.

All of them would be good choices, but I would prefer the Mazda CX-5 or the Kia Sportage. Either would be fine.

Take it back to your Kia dealer and explain your concern to them and ask them to check it to identify if it is the lifters or perhaps something else. If they find a problem have them tell you what they plan to do about it. If you cannot find satisfaction with that take your concern higher and talk directly to the customer service people at Kia headquarters.

The news from Kia Australia's spokesman Kevin Hepworth is not what you want to hear: "That is a North American engine only. No plans for Australia." Sorry.

Take it back to the dealer and inform him that the leak hasn't been fixed and ask that it be done again. Whatever was done before clearly hasn't worked and you need to insist that they continue to attempt to fix it. Let it be known that you won't be satisfied until it is fixed. On your side is the fact that he car is only a few months old. There should be no argument about fixing it. If the dealer can't fix it, escalate you claim by taking it to KIA head office.

Generally petrol is better if your driving is short trips, diesels are much better when you drive longer distances and steady speeds are better than stop-start running.