^This^my mostly gentle driving style has protected the drive train thus far,
And it will probably last a long time, together with a few oil changes- preventative maintenance in mind...no worries

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^This^my mostly gentle driving style has protected the drive train thus far,
Lots of Konas don't have the WoF noise and there are many well over 100,000 km. It's not quite common enough to be described as an epidemic but if you search the forums and YouTube you'll find reports have been consistent from at least 3 years ago, long before I paid any attention to it. Often times on Reddit or Facebook someone will mention they have it then 5 more jump in and said they had it in the past. The vast majority of repairs have been covered by warranty and for that reason I think owners don't think much more about it, despite that I believe it could happen again. With warranties closing out in many countries and Hyundai unlikely to offer goodwill, the tone from affected owners is likely to change for the worse.
There doesn't seem to be any 'safe' kms or miles. With pending end of warranty you're best bet by far (in IMO of course) is to pay attention to cleanliness of the oil, despite that Hyundai don't tell us to. I'll just add that the ticking motor issue is not the same problem and there's nothing any of can do to reduce the risk.
I'm coming up on 2 years being out of warranty. At nearly 28,000 km, 100% SoH, having 4 or 5 oil changes and with a stack of magnets placed under the gear reducer my Kona has never run as quietly and smoothly as it does now.
my mostly gentle driving style has protected the drive train thus far
Not lucky, I'm afraidI suppose it remains to be seen how good this new GRU is. Will I be one of the lucky ones, or will the fault repeat? Will the oil go black? Etc.
Can you put the link of Amazon for magnets?The suspense was killing me so I did the job at 27,435 km, 165 km early of my 4,000 km goal. Bottom line, I'm calling it a 'win', the oil was not tinged black this time but appeared more green, much like spirulina. Sloshed around in a pan it was golden brown and clean, could have been left in place far longer. Magnets had minimal iron as many others have found at short intervals.
I used my inspection camera to relocate more precisely the external stack of magnets I had glued to the housing to better restrain the internal magnet. I added (2) more to make the stack 15mm high. A stack of (3) was only enough to just move move the internal magnet around so I'm thinking (5) should better restrain it against the influence of oil turbulence. There's about 9 mm of aluminium casing to get through so a strong field is needed.
If anyone else wants to replicate this the first issue is determining which pole goes up. The internal magnet could be oriented either way. It's not too hard to figure it out as when it's in the correct orientation at the position shown in my photo below the magnet will center itself and you can feel or hear the internal magnet following and moving in and out of its pocket as you slide the external magnet around, see short video here. So, you'd want to glue the external magnet as far away from the casing joint as it will comfortably sit so that the internal magnet stays hidden in its pocket.
I've used up my supply of oil and given the good results am unlikely to change it again. Chances are I'll be driving another EV in 2-3 years.
View attachment 21315
Fill and drain respectively. This is exactly the quantity of metal I would expect to see given the duration.
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New Penrite 70W-75 v.s. old. It looks dark in sunlight but not so under 3000K LED, below.
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View attachment 21318
New location of magnet stack, moved 10mm in the 8 o'clock direction, a drop of epoxy holding the first one in place, cured overnight. This location should be valid for any Kona but not the Ioniq as it's different.
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The next (4) disk magnets are just stuck on. These were expensive, $22 per 3, and seem to be among the strongest grade of neodymium grades. It's very difficult to slide any two apart.
Here is one (not Amazon). U.S. site also available.Can you put the link of Amazon for magnets?
There is a problem with Kona, it stops after this error P1B2500 High Voltage Path fault, P1BBA00 BMS Owercharge Protection Device Active.
After restarting it goes, but not for log time. How to solve this problem?