06 KIA Spectra: Follow the manual or dealer?

[Zaedock]

Originally Posted By: Chris142
Timing belts work fine but only 40k out of one ?



Yep, more or less. Rio's are junk.

Mother had a Rio prior to buying her Cobalt. We changed the belt at 60K per the manual with a factory belt. It snapped at 82K, destroying the engine. After fighting the dealer, we picked up a low mile boneyard engine and installed a new Goodyear belt. It snapped 38K later, destroying the engine. Mother had enough and bought the Cobalt. No issues in 90-something thousand miles with oil changes, filters, and a set of tires. The brakes still look pretty good too.

Back when she had the Kia, I surfed forums and heard everything from the engines having valve guide issues to poor quality of the vavle stem material, causing binding and snapping the belt. I didn't look into it any further once she bought the Cobalt. She did have one issue with the Cobalt with a recall on the steering shaft(what GM's are known for). They were backed up and gave her a rental - a KIA Rio! It was still tinny and crude and the engine was loud. IMO, they are nothing but toilets.

 

[T_CUDA]

Those motors are hard on oil and don't like after market oil filters. Do not go over 7500. Alot of TSBs on those

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: Zaedock
Originally Posted By: Chris142
Timing belts work fine but only 40k out of one ?



Yep, more or less. Rio's are junk.

Mother had a Rio prior to buying her Cobalt. We changed the belt at 60K per the manual with a factory belt. It snapped at 82K, destroying the engine. After fighting the dealer, we picked up a low mile boneyard engine and installed a new Goodyear belt. It snapped 38K later, destroying the engine. Mother had enough and bought the Cobalt. No issues in 90-something thousand miles with oil changes, filters, and a set of tires. The brakes still look pretty good too.

Back when she had the Kia, I surfed forums and heard everything from the engines having valve guide issues to poor quality of the vavle stem material, causing binding and snapping the belt. I didn't look into it any further once she bought the Cobalt. She did have one issue with the Cobalt with a recall on the steering shaft(what GM's are known for). They were backed up and gave her a rental - a KIA Rio! It was still tinny and crude and the engine was loud. IMO, they are nothing but toilets.



Which Rio?

The first round of Rios were designed off the Mazda 121 and had a copy of the Mazda B engine. Along the way to become the Rio, the car had been the Ford Festiva and Aspire.
The basic design is Mazda. It's good. But the execution left something to be desired. If you drove an early Sephia, it could not be more removed from it's Protege' origins. I have no problem believing that they goofed up on that motor.

The second round of Rios are Hyundai Accent based with the same Hyundai Alpha motor. I don't think I've ever heard of an Accent having a premature timing belt failure. Not on a regular basis anyway. There's a company here that remove the back seats of Accents and cage off the back area to make commercial/courier/delivery vehicles and those see 100s and 100s of thousands of miles (with very bored and annoyed drivers....in spite of coming in Easter Egg colors, that Accent is a boring car)