2000 Kia Sephia Trans Delayed Engagement

[Tim Martin]

Customer dropped off this 00 Kia Sephia. Has 2.0L engine and auto trans. Has 168,000 on the clock. The issue is that when the engine is running and the transmission lever is placed in the D position to go forward, nothing happens. Put it in R and it immediately engages. Put the lever in the 2 position and immediately the car has forward motion and away you can go. Trans shifts great otherwise. You get to where you are going, go do some business, come out to go and you again have delayed engagement. Have changed the fluid with no difference. Fluid smell/color is fine. What may be the issue here? I am out of ideas on this one.

[wbuxton]

Line pressure check should steer you in the right direction. (overhaul)
It looks like 57 psi is minimal, should hit 60 as soon as you put it in forward.

[Tim Martin]

Just got off the fone with the owner. Allow me to back up and relay the whole story. In the dash of this car, the O/D light is on as is the Service Engine Soon light. On Sunday afternoon he goes to *&^% zone and get them to "pull codes". He gives me this list of codes that they printed out. Says I am to check them out. Well, last evening at 10PM i bring this Kia in and hooked my scan tool to the ALDL and read data and codes. Then I began diagnosing the codes that appeared. An hour later (11:10PM), after chasing nowheres and finding nothing, I opt to erase the codes and go for a drive. Transmission and car operates fine except for the delayed engagement I described earlier. So, I park the car and go home. This afternoon the owner calls and asks what I found. keep in mind this car is not in the schedule. He simply dropped it off. He calls the shop and leaves a message Sunday evening telling me that his car is at my shop. I proceed to tell him WHEN i diagnosed the car, and that I found nothing. He aks me what the bill is so far. I tell him an hour of diag time which is 85.00 plus tax. He asks how much for an oil change in the engine and I raise the price. By now he is flipping out. First of all *&^%zone diags the car for free and !@#$%lube does oil changes for 19.95. How comes you are so high. He tells me this is killing him. He would a felt better had I replaced a something than did nothing!!! I said not a word. I am not in the best of moods rite about now. I am a good candidate for eating nails when I leave this place.

Just had to blow steam!

[Tim Martin]

Well, this gets interesting! I went to town in the evening and stopped in by the shop. I discovered that the Kia is missing. The owner came and picked it up after hours. Is that stealing or what? I don't know. Almost at this point I don't care. Maybe its best this way. I still have a key for the car so I suppose at some point he and I will meet............

[steven kiser]

legally it is stealing. on the other hand is it worth your time or aggravation. you can report it stolen and have some fun. probably the person will not answer your calls or return your messages. if you do report it stolen don't tell the bottomer you did unless he answers your call then you can't avoid it. if he's a bottomer leave a message that you have news about their car. document the calls. he probably won't return the calls because after all he took it off your lot without paying. hopefully his wife will be pulled over with the kids in the car late at night and gets held up for hours. hen you report it stolen add "theft of services in there somewhere" don't make it the primary issue. set your alarm for 3am and call it in then. if the police decide to call the owner they'll wake up the household. legally you're restricted in what you can really do but there are things that can be done to make his life miserable.

[wbuxton]

In Texas, you cant report it stolen if you are not the owner. You can file a report, if it was in your care and custody at the time it went "missing". Oh by the way, if it goes to court the county gets paid first for the fees and fines. My customer has spent 2 weekends in jail for failure to pay. Still got no money and it will be 2 years this Thanksgiving.

[fortknoxx]

I would finish the invoice. Call the customer and say, I see you picked up your vehicle last night. Will you be bringing it back? If yes get it, if no tell them they have $??.00 invoice due. If they ask for the key, Tell them it's around here somewhere and they can pick it up when they square away the invoice. Print a copy of the invoice and tape the key to it. Keep that in your desk.

[brianp87]

another wild story

[Tim Martin]

Owner called today and says he got laid off from his job. I sent him to another shop. I lose a few bucks but I'm out of the hassle. Once in a while ya just cut yer loss and ferget about it.

[steven kiser]

i agree with cutting your losses on occasion. it stinks and my first reaction is retribution. after a while it lessens and then just becomes a thing on my list of things to do. i had one person try to jamb me up and it got messy. i got over it and about two or three years later i was awarded. on occasion when he was busy plowing or doing leaf removal he would park his vehicles on state park land at night. the local police wouldn't do anything because this person was such a pain in the a** even they avoided him. during the spring while i was fishing i heard "kiser, you better have a licence", the game warden was a person that i had known for years and was on good terms with. while we were chatting i asked him if his job encompassed issues on state parks as well as hunting and fishing. i was told that not as much as to being able to enforce other laws but he wanted to know why i asked. i told him what was up and what happened. a few weeks later i heard that there had been 4 trucks, a chipper, leaf vac, and a couple of trailers seized for illegally parking on state land. it was discovered that he had been attaching plates and none of the trailers were registered. the kicker was that the chipper had a hydroloic leak and it was on a dirt lot so there was no visible way to tell the extent of the contamination. they found five, five gallon containers of fluid in the back of one of his trucks that were empty. he still is dealing with that. it seems that anything that is over 10 gallons of contamination can (and did) involve the e.p.a. years ago it cost me 20 grand to clean up from a lift leak. i couldn't account for 8 gallons of fluid so it had to be dug up. i wonder how it's working out for him. state land within 50 feet of a pond that's used for recreation. oh ya, to make it even better, the vehicles were found on a piece of land that's in a flood plain. i wonder how that's going to pan out with all the rain and melting going on.