AC failure and Oil Warning Light On

Faults and Technical chat for the Kia Niro
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AlanHo
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 10:05 pm

Post by AlanHo »

Two weeks ago the aircon stopped blowing cold. My wife had told me a few days before that she could hear a "tinkling" noise from behind the dash - which I could not hear despite wearing hearing aids. I did a bit of investigation and eventually found that the noise vanished when the AC was off - but the weather at the time was too cold for me to notice it was not blowing cold.

I booked the car into the dealer for Mon 27th June hoping they would fix it before we went on holiday 4 days later.

2 days before taking the car in, the oil warning light came on - no message - just the light. I was cruising the motorway on the way home with 20 miles to go when I noticed it and pulled onto the hard shoulder. I checked the oil level which was fine. Restarted the engine and the light did not reappear. So I carried on home. 2 miles later it came on again whilst driving on an incline then went off when the road sloped down. This on-off happened several times before I reached home so took it to the dealers on Saturday morning. The technician did some checks and said it was the oil pressure sensor on the blink - a regular problem with some KIA models and I was safe to drive it until Monday when they would fix it in addition to the aircon.

On the Monday they fixed both problems - the oil pressure warning sensor under warranty and the aircon re-gas at cost. This is the first time my 5 year old car has had problems.

How many of us read all the bumf in the service book? - the KIA technician pointed out that it specifies that we are supposed to have the aircon checked and re-gassed every 2 years - yet was unable to explain why KIA don't include it in the service schedule every 2 years. I usually keep my cars for 3 years and this is the first time I have needed an aircon re-gassing.
Currently Sept 2021 Niro 3 HEV in Ocean Blue

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