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Hyundai and Kia Recall a Handful of Cars Due to Incorrectly Tightened Bolt

Both Hyundai and Kia are chipping away at the Japanese golden standards, Toyota and Honda. But given the latest recalls announced by the South Korean marques, both of them really need to step up their quality control in order to pose a threat to those automotive giants.
2022 Kia Forte 27 photos
Photo: Kia
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On March 24th, an employee at Kia Mexico identified a strange noise in the steering column of a 2022 model year Rio during a test drive at the plant. KMX investigated this condition, discovering that the steering column’s U-joint bolt wasn’t torqued properly at the assembly plant rather than the supplier. Kia North America was informed on April 21st, and four days later, they found no complaints or warranty claims associated with this problem.

No fewer than 30 examples of the 2021 to 2022 model year Rio and Forte are called back, vehicles manufactured from September 2021 to February 2022 and May 2021 to March 2022. The population was determined by a review of VINs with traceability of the issue identified by vehicle production records. A grand total of six examples of the Rio and 24 Fortes are called back.

Over at Hyundai, the bigger brother of Kia became aware of the issue on April 22nd after KMX identified an under-torqued steering column U-joint bolt in a 2022 model year Accent. The attached report highlights that “the torque wrench used to install the retention bolt was not updated to the correct specification for tightening torque,” which is a gross oversight that could’ve gotten someone killed in the event of a detached steering column.

Hyundai is calling back two examples of the Accent, built between June 2021 and February 2022. KMX gingerly mentions that the tool used to install the bolts was updated to the correct torque specification last month.

Kia intends to notify Rio and Forte owners on May 27th while Hyundai is taking its sweet time – as always – with a target notification date of July 5th.

Kia and Hyundai dealers will tighten the suspect bolt to the correct spec.
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 Download: Hyundai and Kia steering column bolt recalls (PDF)

About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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