Kia Engines
More customers call us looking for Kia engines than just about any brand of engine. Why? Well, in almost every case, the customer’s engine has been destroyed because of a broken timing belt or a locked up water pump stripping the timing belt. When this happens, the valve train in the Kia engine goes “out of time,” the valves bend, and the engine is destroyed. Complete engine replacement is recommended by most familiar with Kia engines, though it is possible to replace only the cylinder head (assuming a piston hasn’t been cracked by a stray valve).
This is not a problem with the engine, rather, it is a problem with consumer education. Kia doesn’t make their customes aware that they use timing belts which require changing at 40,000 or 60,000 miles. Honda engines, Toyota engines, etc., can often go 120,000 miles without needing a timing belt change because the quality of the timing belts used is so good. Honda, in fact, uses an interference engine just like Kia, meaning that if a timing belt breaks on a Honda, the engine is toast. This isn’t a problem with Honda’s, of course, because of the high quality timing belts that they use.
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