Tatum: How We Can Protect Ourselves from Neglect of a Manufacturer

We all have had that phone call. A customer has a car at a dealership or on the side of the road with a plug out. Did you make a mistake and not tighten the plug? Were there any comments on the invoice for pre-existing issues? Unfortunately, how many of us have had to pay the price of an engine repair for bad design? Regardless of what the manufacturers’ heads like to say, there is plenty of evidence to support the problems with these cars, especially the drain plug.

In October 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it had launched an investigation into Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motor Company for problems with their oil pans and oil drain plugs. Specifically, consumers and aftermarket service facilities have filed complaints that their engine’s oil drain plug falls out, causing all the oil to drain out of their engine while driving.

In multiple tests, the oil drain plug was tightened according to factory torque specifications, and the tightening was well documented. Yet, testing shows in multiple cases that while driving, the oil drain plug falls within a few thousand miles after the service. In those cases, the crankcase drained completely.

The testing and investigations appear to show that the oil drain plans are made with thin metal and the drain plug mounting port is poorly reinforced. In addition, the oil pan has a thick paint coating that bonds the gasket to the pan, so the gasket does not come off when the drain plug is removed. That gasket issue alone is not why the oil drain plug falls out, but it is a factor in the chain of events.

The thin metal, along with engine vibrations and expansion/contraction, tend to loosen the drain plug without any other intervention. NHTSA is investigating this as a factory defect issue.

The problem is two-fold. First, even if the repair shop properly torques the drain plug, the oil drain plug falls out on its own. The customer then blames the shop for shoddy workmanship. Second, Hyundai and Kia dealers are telling customers that servicing their vehicle at an aftermarket shop automatically voids their factory warranty. This is false and illegal under the terms of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

This is the most common issue that we know about from our side of the fence. However, there are reports and diagnostic evidence of bad bolts on the heads, allowing gaskets to fail, a bad fuel delivery system that consistently needs to run cleaner through to operate effectively and ECU issues documented. In other words, you better protect yourself from the process of a bad design.

One thing that you can do is purchase an oil extractor for your location. An oil extractor works by removing oil from the top so that you never have to touch the dreaded plug. Oil extractors are readily available through online retailers, and I have found one that takes the oil out just as fast as a lower bay technician can draining it.

A piece of advice: Make sure to set up comments in your system to document your use of the extractor and that the plug was not removed.

Here is why this is important. Recently, we had a long-time customer to one of our locations have a drain plug back out of her Kia vehicle. The dealership immediately said that we did not tighten the plug properly when we performed an oil change in June. However, since we have these machines in the shop, we never touched that plug. We used the extractor and documented it as such on the invoice. Shop cameras that showed our work verified this.

We began using an oil extractor in December 2024, so we had used the machine for three oil changes on the vehicle in question without touching the plug that came out. Protect yourself from a bad design.

Another thing that you should think about for extra sales and services is adding additive packages to your lineup. Remember that Kia and Hyundai have a requirement to use a fuel additive in the owner’s manual. Reach out to whomever you order inventory from to see if you can get these products on your shelves. If they cannot, feel free to reach out to a product vendor for direct ordering.

At the end of the day, know that there are issues with these two engine designs. The best way to save yourself from the headache of a warranty claim and hit to the bottom line is to spend a little bit of money to equip yourself with the right deterrents. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.