Repair issues and fixes

I wanted to post a general repair issue. My 2020 Kona Limited was in yesterday for a standard service which means a tire rotation and a multi-point inspection. When I checked the car in they asked me how everything was going with the car. I said fine EXCEPT this small issue I have with the regenerative braking paddles which don't allow the car to go to level 3 for some reason. This started slowly but gradually got to a point where a could not get to level 3 using the paddles. This is not an issue since I always drive in ECO mode and I have it set to level 3. But clearly it should work. They told me if I wanted them to look into the issue I would have to leave the car with them for AT LEAST 3 DAYS and no loaner would be available. I took a pass. Not only because of the inconvenience but also because I have no faith in their ability to do anything on my car. They do not appear to have any idea how to service it and have to rely on help from some central service department somewhere. I'm interested in hearing from others. Also - has anyone has this problem with the paddles?

 

My dealer is brilliant but that doesn't mean they might not ask me to leave the car with them if a diagnostic was required. Perhaps advise them of why you think it should take less time? I don't recall any other reports of a failure of this function but I do know from the schematic that it's only a simple push button switch, as most steering wheel controls tend to be due to having to accommodate rotation of the wheel, etc, so it might simply require a new switch. No one will be able to advise you of a potentially better dealer without a hint of global location.

I've only declined a TSB repair when I could see from a technical perspective that it was unnecessary and decided that the risk of cosmetic damage carrying out the repair was less than the risk of the issue not being addressed. But I'm certainly not put off buying another Hyundai by this or other owner's experiences.

 

Just had my reduction gear fluid replaced at the local dealership for the first time at 19,000km. Black and totally opaque. The service person said that they knew nothing about it being an issue. They wanted to charge me 2 hours labor for $500CDN, but after I described the relatively simple process, he talked to the tech and then decided to "only" charge for 0.8 hrs of labor for a total of $250. Appalling. The new oil was $90.

 

The record for a dealer charge here in New Zealand is NZ$450 while the lowest was a reasonable $120. One Hyundai owner has started a trend by buying their own oil and having it changed by an independent shop that is accustomed to servicing the Nissan Leaf. The job is nearly identical to that EV except that Leaf owners don't need to ask them afterwards why the old oil is black.

 

I just recently changed my reduction gear oil again, at 16,000km. Once again black as the ace of spades, as it was at 3000, 5000 and 10,000 km.
I also have the "wheel of fortune" noise, quite pronounced now under low power and low speed. Also I first noticed it intermittently at around 5000km.
A short time after the 16,000km oil change my 2nd annual service became due. I reported the noise and to my surprise I was immediately placed on the list for warranty repair, no questions asked. This is case number two for my dealer who is waiting for parts for case number one.

Not only that, there are circumstances in our house that are making life a bit difficult at the moment, requiring a change of ownership and and contact details from my wife to me. In consideration of that the service advisor is trying to make the warranty repair a one-step process, ie change motor, reduction gear and engine mount or whatever all at once, rather than the three-step process described elsewhere in this and other threads. If it comes to pass I will give my dealer a gold elephant stamp . They are not all hopeless.

Cheers

 

Can you please provide any warranty reference number,and what Hyundai officially calls this warranty repair ?
Does the noise come from the rear while you accelerate,and decelerate ? Where it sounds like a metal scraping sound?

 

Sounds bad on all fronts OZ, sorry to hear it mate.
What is the manufacture date on your car? I would have thought by now they would have engineered a fix into the later dated ones, say January 2022 onwards, as the issue was becoming well known.
Also there is no point in putting in a new motor, gearbox if the problem is still present, in the ones you are putting in.
Mine shows a build date of July 2022, on the I.D plate on the passenger door B pillar

 

Thanks 22. Mine is April 21 build so I missed out on any fixes they may have engineered later. Hopefully if I get a new motor and reduction box the fix will have been incorporated.
.

 

G'day mate.
I have in my hand a printed TSB, number 22-EV-001H, 31 pages, which I downloaded using a link, I think provided by KiwiME, in one of his posts way back in this thread. I think the TSB was raised for this issue in other markets, perhaps USA.

I don't have a warranty reference number, so I suppose the best reference I can provide would be the TSB number, 22-EV-001H. The subject on the document is KONA EV MOTOR RUMBLE NOISE.

Are you familiar with a "chocolate wheel" or a "raffle wheel"? It's a wheel about a metre in diameter with a lot of nails or pins around the perimeter mounted on a stand. The spaces between the nails are numbered. There is a rubber or leather flapper that engages with the nails. The master of ceremonies spins the wheel, the flapper makes a quite specific sound while the wheel slows to a stop to indicate the winning number. The sound is very similar to the noise the Kona makes when the fault is present. It is not really a "rumble" noise, but as it turns out in my vehicle a rumble has developed at higher speeds when under deceleration, so perhaps Hyundai's name for the fault is not so inappropriate.

The flapper-like raffle-wheel noise comes under light acceleration at low speed. The rumble also comes from the front of the car, but at higher speeds under trailing throttle. This fault does NOT generate any noise from the rear of the vehicle. It is not like a metal scraping noise. If you are hearing that, it is a different issue.

Cheers

 

---------------------------------
Thanks for this.
Here is the source: https://www.tsbsearch.com/Hyundai/22-EV-001H-1

Worth the time to check the document. What a complex procedure!

I wonder what Mr. Munro would say about this.

 

It sounds as though the fault may have been identified, as the TSB is dated Oct 2022 and the vehicles identified are 219-2021 and don't include early 2022 models. As usual, time will tell.
All the best and hopefully life and the car work out well Oz.
Cheers

 

This is the only case I'm aware of where an owner who has made the effort to keep their gear oil clean has developed the dreaded noise. However, the rarity of the wheel-of-fortune noise appearing on any random Kona is really too small to statistically correlate that defect with the condition of the oil.

A recent recipient of a new powertrain in Germany was apparently told by their dealer that the many months of delay was due to the halted production of parts while further revisions were made both to motor and gearbox. We can only hope that's true and the new parts will be more reliable. From 6 June 2023, noting it's Google-translated:

Certainly something very general about what he did in 1954 to save the auto industry, followed by a casual comparison to Tesla and ignoring that they had similar issues with the Roadster 2-speed gearbox and a coolant leak in the Model S motor.
Without being able to open up and inspect a failed gearbox the most accurate response possible is that "sh*t happens".

 

I think mine was crook from the outset. IIRC, I reported in an early post in this topic that I had intermittent wheel of fortune (WOF, new three letter acronym ) at maybe 3000km.
So I think it was stuffed before I did the oil changes and the repeated dirty oil just confirmed it.

 

It's possible that the noise problem is resulting in more steel particle shedding than normal and the portion of that caught by the factory magnet (instead of the Votex) in turn rubs more aluminium off the magnet's pocket in the housing. I'm fairly confident that the blackness is mostly, if not entirely a result of aluminium contamination.

One failure mode that may separately generate aluminium is if the steel sealing cap drops off the tail end of the gearbox input shaft. It's installed like a freeze plug and our intrepid Ukrainian EV mechanic (at CarRepairVideos) identified this issue on a Niro. The cap keeps gear oil from flowing along the hollow shaft and reaching the splined coupling with the motor.

My oil also turns black over any 4,000 km interval and the gearbox runs quietly. In another 800 km (at 28,600 km) I'll be able to carry out my next oil change and see if the oil has turned black again. I'm hoping not, the theory being that the magnets I glued onto the the outside are able to keep the internal magnet constrained enough to reduce the generation of aluminium contamination.

 

I'm really close to my 10,000km change, probably in the next couple of weeks, so I'm looking forward to your oil result Kiwi.
Go for a drive down to Queenstown and have a ski. LOL
I haven't hammered my car probably two, max three rapid accelerations in eco mode, so if mine fails, I think there is a real issue.
OzKona keep all the info, maybe take the motor/gearbox numbers of the old and new, we might be able to glean more knowledge.

 

I have said this before on this thread, but am wondering if the lack of dampening from hard regen and hard acceleration may contribute to this problem. I do remember with my Kona how instant the torque was applied when hitting the accelerator and when letting off. Made for some nimble and pleasurable driving, but can see how this might stress the drive train.

I say this again because I now drive two other EVs which are very different in that aspect. In particular my Solterra (Toyota drive train) really dampens the onset of acceleration and deceleration. The highest strength regen is not near that of my past Kona. It makes for smoother driving and perhaps not quite as nimble with one pedal driving control. But it still provides more than enough acceleration when needed. Having said that, I still miss the stronger regen of the Kona.

And I now have my Ioniq 6 (2 weeks) (still a Hyundai) and yesterday did my first road trip where I could really try out many of its capabilities. One thing I noticed is that it, too, dampens acceleration and regen, maybe not as much as the Solterra, but definitely more than the Kona. However, the regen is just as strong as the Kona, and #4 regen (I-pedal mode) I think is even stronger. But it too is dampened. However, pressing the pedal for any length of time really brings on the torque, and it indeed then rockets ahead.

So I really do wonder if how the Kona slams on the torque and lets off with the regen affects the reliability of that drive train.

 

There's very little evidence to base any theories on but the few reports of the few rebuilt Ioniq and Niro gearboxes indicate that only new bearings were required due to roughness or complete failure, and in my opinion that's down to dirty oil alone. Even though the gears appear slightly lighter than I would expect at a glance, I haven't heard of any failures relating to their load capacity. The housing also appears a bit light with the risk there due to (a) tapered rollers used on the output shaft that push the cases apart under torque, and (b) the thrust loading at the input shaft due to the use of helical gears doing the same. But again the very few gearboxes we've seen opened up don't show any signs of failure related to those conditions.

As for shock loading it's true that the motor inertia is not decoupled from the gear train as it is with an ICE using a torsionally-soft clutch hub or fluid coupling. There could be considerable shock loading to gears but that would be more from hitting potholes than acceleration or regen profiles. The time duration of pothole shock loading is far shorter and the amplitude far higher than what you would feel when accelerating. But the engineers that designed the gearbox are well-aware of these requirements, size things appropriately and would have carried out significant laboratory and field testing. None of the used-oil analyses indicate oil oxidation which might result from the loss of oil film thickness at the tooth interface under excessive loading.

In general I think Hyundia's (MOBIS) experienced engineers would not have got the basic gearbox design wrong. The science and technologies of gearbox design are well understood and established in standards from industry groups such as AGMA. Mistakes are more likely to happen when other parties become involved who may not appreciate the fine details. A good example is the internal magnet. The Kia Soul EV has a custom square magnet with ridges (to increase surface area) and (appears) to fit closely inside the pocket in the housing. The Ioniq/Kona/Niro inexplicably use a round magnet inserted loosely in much the same pocket. I suspect that those engineers responsible for taking the gearbox design into production saw an opportunity to change to a far cheaper part and managed to get that seemingly-minor engineering change signed off by someone who did not understand the dynamics and implications of a loose magnet. It's certainly not likely obvious or predictable to even a trained and experienced engineer, you'd probably have to make that mistake once to find out.

The same understanding applies to alignment between the motor and gearbox where tolerance buildup must be minimised to ensure the splines are nearly perfectly aligned. This is important because of the design choice made where they have attached two completely-independent rotating assemblies together without perhaps fully understanding the implications of using a rigid splined coupling. Safely assuming that the motor and gearbox were designed by different groups, this is a failure of systems engineering. The risks they have taken are (a) spline damage or bearing overloading if misaligned, and (b) outer-race spin of the near side bearing at the gearbox input shaft due to geometric overconstraint resulting in insufficient radial loading which could cause wear and eventual excessive radial clearance to the housing. A spline is a traditional method of transferring power used widely in industrial machinery but I'll note that both Tesla (Model 3/Y and S-Plaid) and Hyundai/Kia (all E-GMP and the new Niro) have changed their designs to ones that just happens to avoid these two issues. GM and Ford (Borg Warner) didn't make these mistakes with the Bolt and Mach-E.

 

Unloke you, i have given my Kona a quite few squirts in both sport and normal mode. I'll do that, 22kona, and keep you posted. However I expect it will be some time before any tools are applied to my car as my dealer awaits parts which are on order from Korea. A motor is available but a reduction gearbox is on back order.
Cheers

 

OK, so why would Toyota/Subaru and newer Hyundais like my Ioniq 6 (and probably others) dampen the initial torque forces for both acceleration and regen? The Kona was very instant. And I drove them all in ECO mode.

I do remember when my Kona motor and gearbox were replaced the tech mentioned stronger mating flange bolts with the new parts. Also on the initial gearbox reduction drive replacement they noted metal shavings when they took it apart which may indicate some fretting. The gears may be strong enough, but maybe the early gearbox and motor mating parts were not.

Anyway, am certainly no engineer or expert here, but just noting the diff between the Kona and other EVs I now own. To me it is very noticeable.