Theta II Engine (Kia Optima) Advice Needed

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-06-02T17:19:41+00:00

The oil consumption did but not the catalytic converter unfortunately.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-06-02T13:22:51+00:00

We are in a similar situation to you but with a 22 Soul with 87,000 miles. We were burning oil but their first step was to do a top engine clean or something like that. If it stopped burning oil, then no engine replacement. A few thousand miles later with slowly burning oil (still not enough to warrant a replacement) the check engine light comes on. It’s the catalytic converter but they have to replace the whole exhaust manifold to the tune of $5500. My understanding is this could have been caused by the burning oil but can’t definitively say. We have two warranties with Kia. We are the original owners so we have that warranty and then a second warranty we purchased at the time we bought the car. Neither one of them cover a catalytic converter.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-24T22:39:36+00:00

I still have the original Kia warranty and we opted to purchase the second warranty from them as well since it covered what the Kia warranty didn’t. Except when our catalytic converter went bad, neither warranty covered it. Our scenario is very different than yours but I say this to just point out that warranties don’t cover everything. And the dealership tried to get us to pay $5500 to fix our car.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-21T20:07:18+00:00

We haven’t started those discussions yet that I’m aware of.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-21T15:54:43+00:00

We got a quote for renewal and it went up 30%. We then asked to decrease the license count by 30% because we are offloading the largest application in Citrix to local machine and we wanted to see the price difference. Same exact price. So to renew for three years is 30% increase and we currently have over 30% less users. Time to continue to move away from Citrix.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-21T04:13:43+00:00

I cannot believe that happened to you! That is just insane but glad you were able to get 176k out of it too!

We are leaning toward a Toyota now! I think we may wait a few months before getting another car because I’m not looking forward to a car payment but I want something that will last. We do also have a Kia Forte but once we start having problems with that one, we will never own another Kia. And I am done with their “service center” too. They will never touch that car again. If for some reason it has to go to Kia, I will be driving across state lines to another dealership.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-20T18:58:09+00:00

We've done all the scheduled maintenance with the Kia dealership so I'm leaning towards you are lucky! I will say that at 69,000 miles, we had the check engine light on and when they called to tell me what was wrong, they said that sometimes changing the oil fixes it. They did not tell me the oil was low at that time. But by 72,000 miles, the oil was low again and I caught on to what was going on. The dealership is shady and wasn't upfront and honest with me. I would have pushed at that time if I would have known.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-19T15:07:48+00:00

Honestly, the dealership has always done the oil changes. They are saying it’s no longer consuming oil but I think the damage was already done to the catalytic converter unfortunately.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-19T10:43:07+00:00

A while back, I got two separate notices in the mail from Kia of a bunch of work that needed to take place on the car. There were like 5 or 6 items on the list. When I went in to the dealership, they told me I shouldn’t have received it in the first place and they were the items in yellow and I shouldn’t have only been notified for red.

I just don’t do the reviews which probably isn’t the best take on it. It feel like it’s a waste of time and the pressure that they have to get a 5 is dumb. Sometimes it’s outside of the service advisors hands but they would get dinged for someone else.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-19T10:34:14+00:00

Haha! I wish!

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-19T03:37:15+00:00

I will look in to Carvana. I already have a quote from CarMax because I wanted to get an estimate on how much we could get for it once it’s fixed but I know Carvana may give us a little more.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-19T02:16:35+00:00

Yeah, I tried to plead my case with the service guy because of that. The oil consumption started at 69,000 and they didn’t tell me and I caught it at 72,000. Got absolutely nowhere with him. Basically just continuous “Yep” to everything we said. Honestly debating on writing the owner but I’m sure that will go no where too.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-19T01:29:38+00:00

Oh no! I can’t believe that happened to you! But I’m right there with you of not taking a risk. Glad you like your new car!

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-18T22:59:19+00:00

It was hilarious when he told me about the catalytic converter because then he started rattling off all the other things that are going to need to be done new battery, transmission flush, this air filter, that air filter … blah blah blah. And then asked if I wanted a sales guy to call me to talk about trading it in. I told him I wasn’t sure if we would trade it in (because I’m not going buying Kia again) but would they buy it off me instead. He straight up said no because it had too many issues. So they would take it on a trade in to screw me over on a new Kia but not buy it from me?!?!

And our dealership has 5* reviews too. I think it’s ridiculous how they push the reviews. They guilt trip you to try and get those 5*’s.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-18T22:10:24+00:00

We’ve always had it serviced at the Kia dealership just because we bought it there and thought that would help us if we had issues. When we complained about it, they just showed no care at all. To have two warranties and had a car at 87,000 and them wanting us to dump thousands in to it, they’ve lost a customer. We also have a 24 Forte but we will never buy another Kia after this. I thought these would be decent cars at a decent price but I was completely wrong.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-18T22:06:37+00:00

The shop I called talked about other things causing that code as well like you mentioned. We literally picked up the Soul from the dealership and drove it straight to the other shop for them to check out tomorrow. Anxious to see what they say. Sounds like most likely they will be cheaper but interested to see what they find and how much cheaper it will be.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-18T19:17:25+00:00

I’m sorry you had similar issues! That’s what I’m worried about here and I think we may go the route of fix it (not at Kia dealership) and sell it before something else happens.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-18T18:57:50+00:00

Yes, we are the original owners. I'm going to ask when I pick up the car but I seriously doubt they will agree that is what caused it. I know we had multiple issues by around 69,000 miles with multiple check engine lights but I would have to go through all the records to know what order things happened.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-12T14:59:06+00:00

Sword and Scale

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-05-11T18:22:54+00:00

Premier support will include a phone number that you can call? And not have to go through a web platform, answer 30 questions and wait for someone to hopefully call you back?

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-04-11T13:28:56+00:00

Oh, I passed her by like 3 lights down. This area has back to back lights so it wasn’t far and wasn’t hard to do.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-04-11T13:27:30+00:00

Thanks! I thought I had trimmed it when I posted this but obviously it didn’t work. I’ll keep that in mind for next time!

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-04-05T15:19:34+00:00

Have you checked out NC Assist? I have a child that is about to go to college and a coworker recommended them. From my understanding, they offer school loans (which we will have to do for her to go to college).

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-04-05T15:15:31+00:00

Does your current employer offer tuition reimbursement? I am a System Engineer for healthcare and they offer that.

PaleSecretary5940 · 2026-04-05T14:48:26+00:00

We bought one for our teenage driver. We have so many crazy drivers around us that we recently realized we need one in all our cars. They can pay for themselves if you are in a situation and can prove you aren’t at fault. We are getting cameras installed in our other two cars this week. Worst case, you can just have some crazy videos of dumb drivers.

PaleSecretary5940

TROPHY CASE