Tony Sestito said:
In reply to MonstersHouse81 :
I did talk to the service manager. He said they basically deny everything unless Kia Corporate will allow them to do the service, and it's up to the customer to pursue that. At least he was honest about that. I need to carve out some time to raise the issue with Kia Corporate, even though I feel I shouldn't have to.
I agree, you shouldn't have to, but do it. I promise you will get it resolved. And also sounds like management there seems lazy to say something like that. Document and contact Kia Corporate
In reply to bobzilla :
I have size 12 feet. (Too much for a 5'7" guy!!) They can be a blessing and a curse when it comes to operating pedals.
Over the weekend, I tackled the brakes on the GT. Well, the front ones, at least.
That's because I only ordered one rear rotor. D'oh! I have another one on the way, so I'll tackle that later. The fronts were a lot worse than the rears on last inspection anyway.
Ended up going with the Raybestos Street Performance coated rotors and some Power Stop Ceramic pads. Figured the "high carbon" rotors would hold up better to the daily driver abuse.
It's a dead simple brake job. These have a single piston caliper with a 305mm front rotor, which is pretty big for a car this size. Unscrew the two retaining screws, pop off the caliper, bracket and clips, smack the rotor a few times with your favorite BFH, and you're good.
The pads have these little clips on them that keep the caliper spaced to where it needs to be. Don't forget to reinstall those when you install the new pads!
The pads and rotors were pretty much toast. On top of that, whatever rotors Kia used from the factory were not great. Both fronts had a healthy ridge going with chunks missing on the edges, which may have caused the unbalanced vibration and maybe even the grinding I was getting under heavy stoppage. Even the surface had significant pitting, which I only see with the ultra cheap stuff. And these come with ceramic pads, which are less aggressive on rotors! Be better, Kia.
Similarly, on the pad side, there wasn't much left. Maybe another 1k miles... maybe. The inboard ones were gouged almost to the backing plate.
And everything installed. The difference is unreal. Stopping is so, so much better and pedal feel is very linear now. The car even feels better during acceleration; it just feels more "solid", which is the best way I can explain it. I really wanted to paint the calipers, but I'll probably wait until the spring when I change back to the summer wheels to do that, if at all. I just needed to get this done. The rears will hopefully get done later this week, weather permitting.
That is the one thing about mine I do not like. They are aggressive on tip in, but they overheat so dang easy. I think a better pad compound would help. But in 7k miles they have made zero dust and no noise so there's that.
In reply to bobzilla :
So far, I am very impressed with these Power Stop pads and the high carbon rotors. I usually hate ceramics because they have no bite (especially cold bite), but these are a different story.
I suspect I will be doing mine in the spring. Is this your first pad/rotor change? Mileage?
Tomorrow I will be changing oil, filters and spark plugs. I was surprised to see how short the service interval is for plugs but I guess that's common on modern small-displacement turbo engines.
In reply to Msterbee :
Yes, this is my first brake service. Car has right around 41k miles on it.
I've been doing my oil changes every 5k miles, so I think the next one at 45k will also be time for spark plugs. I've heard that these cars really only want the OEM plugs, but I'm not sure if that's just people on forums and FB groups being dumb or not. I figured whatever OEM-spec NGK or Denso plugs RockAuto carries would be fine.
Tony Sestito said:
In reply to bobzilla :
So far, I am very impressed with these Power Stop pads and the high carbon rotors. I usually hate ceramics because they have no bite (especially cold bite), but these are a different story.
I've always been a cheap rotor, good pad guy. Plus I antisieze the rotors and hubs early on in life so I don't hate myself later. Finding pads for the 23 has been.... challenging.
In reply to bobzilla :
I would assume the pads are the same going back to 2020. That said, there's not much out there for "performance" pads. I used to do the cheap rotor/good pad thing, but in the past 10 years, I've seen cheap rotor metallurgy drop off so bad that I get the good rotors now.
And yeah, anti-seize is a MUST. I put that **** on everything! Although, 5 seconds after cracking open that can, I start looking like this guy:
Tony Sestito said:
In reply to Msterbee :
Yes, this is my first brake service. Car has right around 41k miles on it.
I've been doing my oil changes every 5k miles, so I think the next one at 45k will also be time for spark plugs. I've heard that these cars really only want the OEM plugs, but I'm not sure if that's just people on forums and FB groups being dumb or not. I figured whatever OEM-spec NGK or Denso plugs RockAuto carries would be fine.
I'm right at 44K miles. I must be easier on brakes? I've only had the car on the track a couple times. I picked up factory plugs.
bobzilla said:
Finding pads for the 23 has been.... challenging.
EBC is available (Yellow, Red, Green). My understanding is that Porterfield can make anything up too if you send them backing plates...
I have not tried too hard, but I imagine our cars might cross reference with something like a Veloster Turbo or Elantra GT, which might yield some other options too.
In reply to FSP_ZX2 :
Porterfield has their R4S. I'd rock those again in a heartbeat. I won't use EBC. I've never had a set that I felt was worth half of what I paid. I can't find the actual pad style for the 22/23, but the 20/21 are the same as the Veloster Turbo 19-21
bobzilla said:
In reply to FSP_ZX2 :
Porterfield has their R4S. I'd rock those again in a heartbeat. I won't use EBC. I've never had a set that I felt was worth half of what I paid. I can't find the actual pad style for the 22/23, but the 20/21 are the same as the Veloster Turbo 19-21
The Porterfield's are stupid expensive. 
In reply to Tony Sestito :
Sooo... Related but not related to this thread... Potentially it may be in the future.
My older daughter purchased a 2016 Kia Soul last May. It had about 120K miles? Last week she was on the way to see family when the car spun a rod bearing. They towed it to the nearest dealer for diagnosis. In conveying info to my daughter the dealer said there is an extended warranty on the car due to a settlement over engine issues with not just the engine in her car but a number of other ones in the Kia/Hyundai family. After some back and forth about service records they denied paying for a new engine because they don't have records proving that the car was serviced properly before my daughter's ownership. Obviously we are pissed and I've dug into investigating this whole deal. Turns out there was an earlier class action settlement involving other engines in the Kia/Hyundai family that were also prone to certain issues that resulted in engine failures. (Many of these issues appear to involve either the direct injection system or overheating catalytic converters.) Based on a bunch of reading the past 24 hours it's clear that the issues happen regardless of if you maintain the car well or not. I'm preparing a letter with a lot of this documentation to send to Kia consumer affairs, but I'm not particularly hopeful that this will be resolved without resorting to legal threats/action.
All of this makes me very concerned for the future of my Forte. It's great now but will it continue to be ok or will the engine fail in the middle of nowhere in a few years time and will Kia leave me hung out to dry if it's another defect on their part? I'm beginning to think that my plan to keep it long term may not be smart. As part of my letter I definitely plan to raise the subject that we have two Kia's in the family and that if they are unwilling to support their products we will dump them and go elsewhere and be very noisy about it.
Anyway. I needed to vent.
In reply to Msterbee :
That's awful, and I'm sorry you're dealing with all of that. As far as these cars go, I really don't have any idea what to expect for high mileage dependability. There are a few of them out there now with 150k+ miles on them and they are starting to have minor issues that any car at that mileage could have. One specific car on a FB group was having EVAP system issues. My Mazda 3 did that around that mileage, too. The "unknown" in my thread title is basically questioning how this car will be longevity-wise. I'm hoping to drive mine for years to come, but we'll see.
Yesterday, I finished my brake job by tackling the rear brakes.
The rears had a ton more pad life left, but the rotors were a bit glazed, so I didn't mind changing them out. But let me tell you, the person who decided to start putting those Phillips head retaining screws in rotors has a reserve table at Club Hell waiting for them. While I was able to get the front ones out without much drama, I had to extract three out of four of them from the hub.
I was lucky to get them all out, except for one.
This guy drilled all the way through and left a "sleeve" in there. Kinda hacky, but it was REALLY cold yesterday, and I didn't have another vehicle handy to make a parts run, so I decided to just run this side without screws. I don't think those retaining screws really do much anyway, and most cars I've had don't even have the things, so I think I'm fine.
On top of that, it was all pretty standard stuff. Very similar to my old Mazda 3, actually. These have the screw-type caliper piston e-brake setup, so as long as you have the tool to spin them back in (or a set of needle nose pliers), things should go ok. That and you have a bolt/screw extractor kit.
Brakes are pretty solid now after brake-in. Earlier, I said that they had good cold bite, but I'll walk that back a bit. They are a little vague when very cold, but after driving a bit, they bite HARD. And something must have been dragging, especially up front, because the car feels faster and is getting better gas mileage after the brake swap. I don't get it, but I'll take the win!
Next major thing is spark plugs at the next oil change. I'd like to find a place online to get some factory plugs; any recommendations?
In reply to Tony Sestito :
I've been using a few eBay retailers selling Hyundai Mobis parts for a looooong time.
This is one
In reply to bobzilla :
That's a good suggestion. Beware many of the others on Ebay and even Amazon though. I'm soon to replace the coils on my Expedition and I've learned that many sellers show factory packaging and put headings like "genuine" in the part description when they are really selling aftermarket parts in factory-look packaging.
bobzilla said:
In reply to Tony Sestito :
I've been using a few eBay retailers selling Hyundai Mobis parts for a looooong time.
This is one
That link is busted, but if you have the name of the seller, I will search. Thanks!
In reply to Tony Sestito :
shopkoreaparts
Koreaparts
Koreapartsnew
Those are three I've used in the past. Some come from US warehouses, some direct ship from South Korea.
I realized that the recommended service interval for a plug change on these is a weird 42k miles, so I set out to order a set, since I had 41k on the car. After doing some research, I found that the NGK Laser Iridium plugs (part # 97080) are the identical plug as the factory plugs. Only difference is the box they come in. That said, I ordered 4 of those from RockAuto and saved $25 over the parts counter.
I read in places (mostly a Forte GT FB group I'm in) that this is a hard job and that there's all sorts of stuff in the way, removing the coils is difficult, etc. Not sure what's in their vapes, but this may have been the easiest plug change I have ever done. It was about 20 degrees out today, so I am very glad this was an easy one!
Pop the engine cover off, and you're presented with your typical coil-on-plug 4-cylinder engine setup. Only tools needed are a 10mm socket, a 5/8 spark plug socket, and an extension. One 10mm bolt per coil; remove those and the coils come out easily.
This was the "hard part"; I had to slightly move this wiring harness and pipe out of the way to access the 10mm coil retention bolt. Oh man!
When I said that these are the same plugs as the factory ones, I meant it. Same exact catalog numbers on the plugs and everything. I did notice little Hyundai emblems on the collars on the stock ones. The aftermarket NGKs did not have that. That and the box they come in are the only differences.
Plugs looked like plugs with 42k miles on them. No areas of concern; they look pretty good. I honestly think they could go a lot longer, being iridium and everything, but I'm going by the book here. When I installed the new ones, I dabbed a little anti-seize on them so they come out easy down the road.
BONUS: I also remembered it was about time for a cabin air filter. I think I went over how that's done earlier in the thread.
Old one looked better than I thought it would, but I changed it anyway.
Next up: Keep driving the thing!
Do my eyes spy a METAL valve cover?! Hardly ever see that any more. Or is it just the lighting?
I'd buy one of these just for that! 
In reply to CyberEric :
You make a good point. Pretty sure it IS metal! Cast aluminum to be exact. It's ugly AF, but if I ever have to pull it for a gasket change, you know it's getting some paint, even though you'll never see it.
In reply to Tony Sestito :
correct, all the gamma motors have aluminum cam covers. Looks identical to the NA version in my Rio.
