Our Kia Sportage engine broke at 53 thousand kilometers (EXTENDED TEST)

The long test ended after a mileage of 53,514 km! The Kia Sportage ended up in the service station with coolant leaks and loss of power. The diagnosis: engine damag magazin de piese auto online.

Our Kia Sportage engine broke at 53 thousand kilometers (EXTENDED TEST)

Sometimes, when everything is so beautiful and completely to your taste, we look for a hair in the soup. Here we found it in the engine block. A small crack between cylinders number three and four, and the end of the long test of the car with the registration number F-PR 1319, which began so promisingly on November 2, 2022.

Kia Sportage 1.6 CRDi with 48-volt electrical system and 136 hp, in Experience Green color and equipped with everything that is good and expensive: GT-line with 19-inch wheels, Kia's great navigation system, which most people could use intuitively and its voice control is at the level of German premium models, with a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission without pulling when starting. Price of the test car: 101,240 leva (calculated based on data for Germany).

After the initial 520-kilometer mission, tester Rolf Klein was impressed: "Cheers to the diesel! Even the "race" on the highway doesn't raise the consumption above 8.5 liters." We spent an average of 7.9 liters of diesel per 100 km over 50,271 km. And things get even better when you drive calmly: "After almost 6,000 km of work, there was a six in front of the decimal point," summed up the reporter Andreas Mai, like many others, such as test driver Stefan Mallach, he confirmed for the Sportage: "136 hp. is enough. The engine rattles a little, but it doesn't need more power!"

But at 53,514 km, we feel that we would like more power. What happened? First, the heating cut out, then a loss of power – and the check engine light came on. The first diagnosis: the car was losing coolant! There was one detail that seemed strange to the Kia service: the mechanics had turned their attention to the inlet and outlet pipes of the heater radiator, where there should actually be two clamps without a screw installed – and on our Sportage there was only one clamp, but with a screw. Did another service station notice a leak and replace the clamp? If so, it is too late now. The car continued to lose coolant, so Kia Germany looked deep into each other's eyes and decided: Things are getting too hot, we will end this.

When dismantling the engine, both the people from Kia and the DEKRA expert Markus Konstantin discovered the fault immediately: a small crack at the base between the third and fourth cylinders. “The car had too little coolant, which caused overheating,” the DEKRA man summarizes.

And the people at Kia were honest, saying: "we sold 16,513 cars with this engine, 5,076 of which were Sportages. There are eight known cases across all models, two of which are in the Sportage." It's a good thing that Kia offers a 7-year or 150,000 km warranty. Because otherwise the repair for Kia would have cost the equivalent of about 6,600 BGN.

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Sometimes, when everything is so beautiful and completely to your taste, we look for a hair in the soup

Kia Sportage 1