Here's a good place to start

http://www.kifomanual.com/kia_forte_td_201...manual-177.html


By the way, I know of a guy who could help you with your bumper if you've not found any. Feel free to drop me a PM if you need the contact.

As to whether our bumper have pearls, that's the first time I heard about it. That normally refers to the Prius with the blizzard white paint, which can be a real pain to get right once something happens. Our's is just standard metallic paint.

hehe glittering metal is a fairly popular color..but interestingly during a recent TT, Red and white was really popular.

It's good to see more ceratos on the road..hopefully that encourages Naza to build up their knowledge base and spare parts stock

+1 on this bit. I had the same problem right after I changed my ATF. In my case the pull was noticeable when shifting down from 3 -> 2. For our 6 banger gearbox, 2 -> 3 and vice versa is the hardest to get done right due to the clutches that need to be engaged.

Could very well occur on other gears as well. But when it does, have the SC do a TCU (transmission control unit), BMS (Brake management) and ECU reset. Drive around for a while and it should hopefully solve the issue.

The suggested procedure after doing this is to drive the car at a steady throttle position allowing the car to cycle up from gears 1 through 6 and all the way down again to a complete halt. Do it 5 times and the gearbox will hopefully have the proper adaptive settings again.

Yup that's the general symptoms. Basically it's just wear and tear and the gearbox will need to just re-adapt to the change in the wear of the clutch bands.

There is a end user procedure that you can use, but well...ask the SC to do the above. It should sort the problem.

My bad on that bit, it should be the clutch packs and bands. Basically these some of the components exposed to wear and tear over the life of the transmission. Here's some info:

http://www.jimjenningstransmissions.com/fa...topic=24&faq=66

I suppose as it's mounted correctly and not shorted in any way it should be fine. I doubt the device is carefully calibrated anyhow so the chances of mistakes is quite low.

For me, my fuel consumption was around 7.8 - 8.2 L/100 KM after break in and till 20K KM service.

At 20K KM service, I changed my ATF, tranny, BMS and ECU reset and it dropped to around 7.4 - 7.5 L/100 KM.

My driving pattern is typically 50/50 highway/city.

After dumping in a bottle of Techron FC cleaner, with a small tank of V-power to clean the fuel system, it went down to 6.9 L/100 KM on my usual route daily. It's now hovering between 6.9 - 7.3 L/100 KM.


Basically for our cars, they are relatively heavy. The biggest consumer of fuel is when you start off, basically when you leave a tol plaza, or traffic signal. The fact that it's so heavy, hard revving doesn't actually contribute much into getting the car moving. You're just spinning the engine flywheel, but the torque converter turbine can't catch up. So the easiest way to save some amount of fuel is, start off gradually from a stop as it's pointless to rev so high anyway.

Other aspects well, just make sure your tyre pressure is right. I normally over inflate mine somewhat. But don't do this unless you know what you are doing.

Fuels, play a role as well. There are some fuels based on my combined testing with others yielded better mileage or trade off mileage for better smoothness. BHP being quite good quality fuels are very smooth but yield somewhat poorer mileage. Caltex being somewhat rougher, yields slightly improved mileage.

Oils play a role. Go for 5W-30 oils rather than 5W-40. Or if you dare can try 0W-20 with some really good additive package i.e Moly in it. And use proper synthetics not cheapo synthetics, they make a difference especially in terms of protection as the oil ages.

If you have not swapped out your ATF after break in, no harm doing so as I noticed slightly improved mileage after doing that. Likely the abrasives material from the break in material was reduced after the change. If you can afford it, go for the original KIA ATF-SP IV. Some places offer Petronas Tutella...compatible to SP IV, but I wouldn't chance it.

Beyond that, know your driving. Our car has a torque converter lock up clutch that links your engine physically to the gearbox under certain conditions, minimizing losses due to inefficiencies of the transmission's torque converter. Under some situations, it is preferable to have it lock up as much as possible, whilst at other times, lock up may not be desired. I'm still trying to best balance this bit. But basically if lock up occurs, you will find you can't glide too far, but if it does not lock up, you can glide slightly further, but at the expense of a small amount of fuel.

How do you tell you torque converter has locked up? Don't quote me on this, but this is what I noticed. Just drive along, say around 80...let go of your throttle. If:

1) you still see your current fuel consumption has a small bar indicating some petrol being used, it means it has not locked up

2) if after letting go the throttle, the RPM drops to a very odd number that's not representative of the speed you are at. I.e if you are going at 90, the RPM should be around 2.3-2.5K RPM. If the torque converter did not lock up, it can drop to 1.xK RPM.

If you can manipulate the lock up to your desired behavior, I'm guessing it can help save some fuel, depending on situation. I.e, if I am on a long stretch, i'd rather have it lock up rather than not as there would be no power loss from the engine to the wheels. It's directly linked.

Hope this helps

Depending on your mileage, it could be your engine oil. In my case, I found that as I reached 7-8K KM (almost time for service), Helix "fully synthetic" engine oil (Helix Ultra) starts to feel somewhat sluggish. Engine response slows, fuel consumption goes up slightly.

Not sure why the steering feels heavy though..

Thanks man Hopefully it will be of interesting use for fellow owners.

Here's some tricks I found regarding the lock up:

1) The lock up engages based on engine load. If you are putting a lot of demand at that moment on the engine, the lock up will not likely occur.

2) Likewise, when you are undergoing very light engine load, the torque converter will more likely lock up

Hence, I try to keep my feet light on the throttle unless necessary and most of the time the torque converter locks up.

However, here's also another trick to lock it up. If you find that it's no locked up, just tap the accelerator lightly, give it a short amount of distance with light foot. It should lock up

Tyre balancing and alignment is probably best to be done outside in a dedicated tyre shop. Look for one that does high speed balancing. That helps to give a better ride when you're going at highway speeds.

Also find a shop that can straighten your rims in case you bent it due to our potholes. Some shops offer this at a small fee. Our rims are really fragile.

Go to the SC and demand that they reset:

- TCU
- ECU
- BMS

Then you will need to take your car for retraining/acclimatization. The gearbox will relearn and adjust itself to match the gearbox's current nature.

More details in my earlier post but a brief run through would be:

- Drive your car from a stop, all the way to the 6th gear (typically around 110 is fine) on a steady throttle. And then let it slow down to a stop by itself, allowing it to cycle through all the gears. Repeat the procedure 5-6 times. Naturally you will need some empty roads to do this.

- If you feel shift quality is still not ok, do some skip shifts, i.e 6->4, 5->3 etc, but becareful not to over-rev your engine.

Doing the above solved my problem. But do not that the gearbox also has a mechanism that commits the final values only after a certain process. This bit I am not sure, but I suppose it would be pretty similar to the older one where you go from D->N->R->P->R->D or something. Nontheless, the essence of it is you will likely need to enter park approx 5-6 times. So during your driving sessions, bear this in mind and give the gearbox a chance to learn. Hope it helps

No worries man. Yup the issue normally happens when the gearbox is cold. After it's warmed up then it's not jerky anymore.

My mileage was 20K. It happened when I changed my ATF. So basically I just got them to do the reset and it was perfectly fine after that. Most important is the fact you need to reset everything, not just the TCU because the TCU takes inputs from ECU and BMS.

I believe all cars with some form of wear adaptive gearbox will eventually have this issue. It's just that, you may or may not realize it because it happens when something changes in the gearbox, i.e in my case, it's because I drained the old ATF, so the pollutants in there are no longer present.

Most SC should be able to do this. Just let them know you want to reset those stuff via GDS. Note that after a reset, you may still feel the jerk like I did, but that's only for a while. Subsequent times should be fine.

Yup, so far just did one reset and it's fine. One thing to add, the TCU reset is actually called the T/A values reset. Just in case they get it wrong.

Actually I would tend to think if you have a chance you ought to do it as soon as possible. When I discovered it I went straight to the SC and ask them to look into it. The concern was it may cause undue wear and tear on the clutches.

The standard service interval is 40K. I changed mine at 20K at my own option actually...so it's not really standard procedure. But I don't fancy ATF with wear in pollutants going around my very expensive gearbox haha

The seri kembangan SC is really quite hopeless. They present themselves fairly nicely, but when trouble hits or push comes to shove, they just abandon the owner. Happened to me back when I had my engine oil leak and gearbox issues.

Never went back there since as there are much better SC out there

Hope this helps. Answered point based to make it easier for you to relate to the question:

1) Resale value is fairly subjective. A 1 year old K3 is going for about 85k. So that's about a 10K+ depreciation a year if you look at a purchase price of around 95K+. I'm not sure what's the price of a 1 year old city or civic though

2) This is something we have to accept. Spare parts wise, it can be a bit pricy. Mainly because pretty much everything in the car is new and hence the pool of shared parts is small. Unlike a Vios that shares a 10 year old powermill and gearbox with it's older siblings, which will likely have a larger pool of shared parts. That being said, there are some things that Toyota charges more with regards to spares. So, yes some parts can be pricy, but time will tell

3) Pretty happy with my car relative to the price I paid back then. It is quite comfortable and spacious. Handling wise is ok, not fantastic. Fuel consumption for me is quite good. Note that I compared a K3 to a city as well back then and the K3 is a much better drive. Can't compare B-segment cars to C-segment.

4) I've had gearbox and engine issues. The former has been sorted with the replacement of a switch and the engine oil leak has not really resurfaced since

5) My 1.6 K3 had been reupholstered in leather, so in the hot sun, it can get pretty hot, but not overwhelmingly hot. Get a good tint and you should be fine. Never really had the issue of the seats burning any parts of my body yet.

Hi the switch that was replaced is the Shift Inhibitor. Basically my gearbox would not engage if I moved it to D. Takes a few D/N/D/N to actually get it to engage.

The switch problem also manifests itself visually when your current PRND indicator on your MID disappears, indicating a switch issue.

Yup I did it at the same SC that reset my AT. They had experienced that issue before on another K3, so they kept a few spare stocks.

Fairly curious about this issue as well. Once I get my OBD2 reader, I'm going to take a drive up and chart the gearbox temperature.

Our car has a shared cooling for the engine, ATF and air cond. I suppose if under some level of stress, it might cause the temps to rise...I'm not sure what kind of driving conditions or load was the driver putting on his car when his gearbox overheated.

I did sound insulation on my car. Basically the boot has some fairly basic bitumen like material for sound insulation, but only at certain places (sharp angles) as far as I can see.

For the bonnet, there is a bonnet cover, but that's more for heat insulation than anything else. Basically the floor has some decent insulation, but no harm adding more if you can afford it.

Congrats on your purchase. Wise choice indeed

I think the battery issue is coming to a head as K3 starts to reach the 2 year mark in their lifespan. The issue plagues both 2013 and 2014 models, and I was concerned about it as well. Hence I had my battery checked during a recent service and got some inputs from the tech guys.

Basically as long you drive the car all the time, with some decent driving between starting and turning it off, the battery should last quite a while. During my 20K check, the battery was still relatively healthy. I do approx 40 -50 minutes of driving daily.