Repair issues and fixes

I bought a "Fluid Pump for Quart Bottles" from a local parts store, but is also available from ebay.
Search for "FLUID HAND TRANSFER PUMP FOR QUART BOTTLES Gas Motor Oil Transmission Extractor"
Had to cut the top off the Red Line oil container with tin snips to get the pump to fit, but very easy and clean.

 

I will have to check clearance carefully. I did measure around 30mm to the ring gear last year before installing the Votex. The DeeFill total inserted length will be 18mm. But I still want the magnet to be shrouded by thread if possible so I may have just bought myself a new desktop ornament.

 

Lee Valley:

https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/hardware/rare-earth-magnets/magnets/disc/32065-rare-earth-circular-magnets

 

I'm quite surprised how effective that idea was. It might be a good low-budget DIY plan for owners on the fence, plus it reduces the risk of things going wrong if they make mistakes installing a magnetic plug. I dread the day someone strips the threads or installs a cheap magnetic plug and the magnet drops off.
Do these button magnets stay in place by themselves or is the tape required?

 

They would stay in situ on their own, but my brain is wired such that a small square of 3M double sided automotive trim tape between the unit attached to the plug itself lends me restful nights

One needs a screwdriver and a clamp to pry off these magnets from each other and/or off the plug.

 

Ok, thanks, good to know.
******

I have been wondering about the appearance of the Kona's magnet in the photo that @hobbit posted. It seems to have rounded edges like a pill, rather than a classic disk magnet. The second photo came from the Ioniq teardown photos which looks more like the expected disk shape with some sort of hole in the middle.

The other note is that the Ioniq magnet is sitting against the far end of its retaining pocket (due to the housing being photographed while placed on the floor) while the Kona magnet is tight up against the other housing half which has a fin-like feature to keep the magnet in place. You can see the excess silicone sealer gasket oozing out between the housing halves.

Comparing the two photos it appears that there is a lot of left-right rattle clearance in the captive space.

What's concerning me is that @hobbit's magnet might have worn off what were once sharp edges due to that rattle. But then why does the wear look so even? Well, that's where it gets interesting. It's entirely possible that the magnet is rotating while it rattles, egged on by the forceful oil flow that sees more of one magnet half than the other due to the shape of the retaining pocket and fin.

Aside from adding even more black (!) wear material to the oil, my larger concern is that it gets small enough to make an exit.

 

My Kona has just had a service, and I’m cautious about after-market solutions, especially for critical components. I have also moved on from DIY and am happy to pay a technician!
So I am fence-sitting on the magnetic drain plug for now.
With a view to approaching my garage oil in hand, one of the oils identified by @KiwiME is Penrite Pro Gear Full Synthetic 70W-75, and where I live, is available in 2.5 L quantities - enough for 2 gearbox refills (1.1L), whereas several other choices are all about 1L (I’ve looked at Hyundai, Shell, & Redline), and 2 of each would be needed for ONE refill.This appears to make the Penrite option very attractive cost-wise.
My Kona has had a gearbox refill with the service, and as a GL-5 was wrongly used, has been replaced, which gave me an insight into the oil change as a one-off job.
I had the car back 40 minutes after the technician took it into the workshop, and that included a quick spin around the block to check all was well. The technician time was listed at 0.63 hours, so having a garage change the oil is not a big expense. If I used Penrite, total cost of half the oil + labour would come to $70 all up (my local currency, elsewhere would vary but the price should not be a deterrent.)

The oil drained from my Kona gearbox @3 years and 22K km looked like Coke, completely filthy, and it increasingly seems highly likely that an oil change ASAP should be seen as essential for all owners. Even if you are not into DIY, an oil change is always beneficial for gearbox life...

 

KiwiME, I feel uncomfortable as my problem disturbed your good night’s sleep even though I would never come up with the idea that came into your mind.
I thought that whining is caused by the reduced viscosity of oil which leads to its inability to lubricate the gear engagement areas at very high rotational speeds. I was trying to choose the oil with better viscosity at -40 degrees Celsius to avoid this.
All going well I will continue monitoring the sounds coming from the reducer in the coming winter and will report here

 

When I changed the reduction gear oil at 142km in my Kona EV the oil was black and you couldn't see a bright light though it. Well it has had a week to settle.
For fun I strapped a voicemail magnet from a HDD to the side of the bottle. These are really strong magnets and you can see the particles in the oil attracted to the magnet after only a few minutes. This is a 500ml bottle... half the oil from the reduction gearbox.



Though this might be of interest

 

The fact that there is ferromagnetic material present at all further adds to the evidence that the internal magnet is ineffective, because otherwise that metal would have stayed inside the gearbox stuck to that magnet instead of getting flushed out.

The particles settled to the bottom have lost their magnetic attraction while the ones near the magnet still have some left. But more importantly not many had become small enough to remain in suspension and maintain the black colour. It also seems to prove that the black colour is due to these particles and the oil wasn't black from the start.

Figuring the oil was in service for roughly 2 hours total it also tells me that particles stay ferromagnetic for about half that time, longer than I thought.

Thanks for doing that test and posting the photo as we don't have any other data from a brand new example.

 

As we approach the conclusion of this subject I've written a new more-concise one-page summary. Perhaps some of you could cast your eyes over this and see if it's clear to the general public and something I could supply to Niro and Ioniq owners as well, despite that most of our data is from Kona owners? Currently a Niro (on this site) and an Ioniq owner (ioniqforum.com) are frustratingly looking at returned noises after having their powertrains replaced.

I do have a more detailed 15-page report that I will post here and may send to the NZ importer once it's ready.

 

Hi @KiwiME, a couple of suggestions.
In para 8, the reference to "line 5" would be clearer as "para 5"
"mitigating" clearer as "correcting"
"sequester/ed" clearer as "remove/d"

Your dedication to this is admirable..

 

Thanks for all that, have a gander at this version when you get a moment.

 

Ignore that, minor simplifications here.

 

Hi KiwiMe, would you add a mention of the Navguy12 external magnet approach?

 

Para 8: ref to “paragraph 5” not “paragraph 6”
Para 9:”mitigating”

 

Thanks, @hieronymous, all done now.

Although that fix appeared to worked as it had been implemented, because this summary document is also aimed at Hyundai service, importers and corporate, I need to stay focused on a single, simple remedy along the lines of what they would do. And that would be to change the plug part number to a one of a magnetic variety via a TSB, if they actually have such a thing!
Once we have OzKona's input, which I'm certain will return clean oil, I'll try to bring the issue to a close.

 

No such luck, I'm afraid. At 4000km I flushed the reduction gearbox (post#171) to get as much of the crud out as possible - ie, a second oil change about 300km after the initial one. Today at 10,050km, ie after about 5700 km, the oil was again as black as the ace of spades. It also showed some colloidal material in the pan but not as bad as at 4000km. I could not get a decent photo of that - the phone camera picks up way more reflections than you see with the naked eye and every attempt was a fail.

Here's a side-by-side pic of new oil and what came out of the car:



Here are the two plugs. There is about an equal amount of very fine sludge on the magnets, but clearly they didn't catch much which is a real disappointment. I think we need KonaAU's speaker magnet (post#449) inside the transmission


To make matters worse, a few days ago I'm sure I heard the beginnings of the wheel of misfortune noise as I slowly drove up my uphill driveway. It sounded just like the leather flapper against the nails on the chocolate wheel, only not very loud. It varied with speed and if I went slow enough the individual clicks were clearly evident with a short space between each.

It happened only once and despite listening for it and duplicating the circumstances I have not heard it again.

Regarding the oil, I don't know what to do. It really is Hyundai's problem and their approach is fix the car when it breaks, so maybe I should not do any oil changes and let nature take its course.

But that goes against my grain. I look after my gear (pun not intended) and feel prevention is better than cure. It seems to me that an oil change every 5000km is required, but given the amount of crud in my oil after 5700km I'm not sure that such a regime will be effective in the long term. I feel it will just delay the inevitable so that failure will likely occur outside warranty. And in this day and age, the gearbox service interval I propose cannot be considered reasonable, despite apparently being required.

So what to do?

Just BTW, the oil that I took out at 4000km has been sitting undisturbed for over 6 months. There has been no settling at all, unlike KonaAU's 143km sample at post#449.

Anyway, I will send off the two jars of oil from today's exercise for comparative analysis and will post the results when I get them.

 

Well, that's disappointing to hear. The volume of metal on the magnets looks correct to me from the kms driven and I'm wondering if the blackness is more due to aluminium from a spinning outer race than steel shed off gear teeth? The UOA would provide some insight. Certainly we have to remain clear that the blackness itself is not harmful, just the fact that it's indicative of an abnormal condition. It's a matter of determining what that is and predicting how it could lead to owner expense when out of warranty, or outside the coverage of consumer protection laws in our cases. I suspect that it takes a far smaller amount of aluminium to turn oil black than it does steel.

Certainly a 5700 km interval won't be tolerable to any owners other than perhaps the most diligent that DIY, but even that would have required that the oil be missing the black tint. But that's fine, we had a goal and this is the new datapoint we have to accept. I'm wondering now if this is a random event regarding your example or does it apply to all Konas? I had been patting myself on the back as to how predictable the oil changes reports have become, the entire basis of my argument that the defective OEM magnet is the root cause of all the problems we are seeing. I was hoping that the chances of Hyundai making two major screw ups in the same area were nearly zero, but their abilities may have exceeded my expectations.

It doesn't help all this that there are currently three cases reported on forums where a replaced powertrain (motor and gearbox) are now developing the wheel of fortune noise again. One Niro here and one Ioniq at IoniqForum.com with another on FB.