The Tragedy of Owning a Kia Sephia

[Mazda96Protege]

All a 94-97 Kia sephia is good for, is exactly what I did to it in my sig.

bwahahahaha thats great and true at the same time!!!

[94GLD-DX]

poor poor little Kia, almost feel sorry for it. HAHA yea right

[mannydingo]

I was going to state that it's only the 94-97 Kia Sephia GS but it's already in one of the links posted above. That's important because I once bought a 91 Escort LX with a bad tranny to swap my 1st gen Protege tranny in. The thread(s) I read mentioned how it would work. After buying it I would learn from other threads that it had to be an Esort GT, not LX. Using the search function doesn't always turn out with the right answer unless you do three or four searches of about an hour each!

[TheLastMarauder]

I'm fairly sure Sephias are cursed.... Perhaps Kia's plant is built on some sort of ancient burial ground?

[mannydingo]

I'm fairly sure Sephias are cursed.... Perhaps Kia's plant is built on some sort of ancient burial ground?

How would you know? You're the last of the marauders. No more raiding and pillaging for you, sir, or you will disappear as well. Kidding aside, the Sephias are just cheapo cars. However, the GS is definitely the exception. You will get a good engine in a 94-97 Sephia GS.

[D323]

How would you know? You're the last of the marauders. No more raiding and pillaging for you, sir, or you will disappear as well. Kidding aside, the Sephias are just cheapo cars. However, the GS is definitely the exception. You will get a good engine in a 94-97 Sephia GS.

I see sooo many of those in j/y's that have no visual damage its not even funny.

[mannydingo]

I see sooo many of those in j/y's that have no visual damage its not even funny.

Maybe regular Sephias--I go to the junkyard all the time. I almost never see the GS's there. However, the other Sephias I see just as often as you do. I see them all the time. I see them just as you say, there's no body damage. The GS's I have rarely come across there. We're in Miami where we have junkyards galore.

[goldstar]

The tragedy continues. This afternoon, my wife comes home from work in the green excrescence (our affectionate name for the Kia) with a headlight problem. The low beams are inoperative but the high beams work normally. Since there's a single 25A fuse for the headlight circuit, it's obvious the problem doesn't lie there. Equally obvious, it must be the hi-lo beam relay so I go to the fuse/relay box in the engine compartment and pull the relay. Of course it's dark out now but fortunately I have a 90W halogen floodlight in my driveway and between that and the lantern my wife is holding there's just enough light to do the job.

Whichever company makes the relay, it's labeled with the Kia name. Of all the cars I've owned, I've never had a headlight relay go bad so I'm sure Kia told the electric company to make the cheapest, POS relay they could devise, just like every other part incorporated into the marque.

Then, it's into my trusty '02 DX and off to Pep Boys we go. I figured that headlight relays are pretty generic devices so several auto electric companies must make a replacement. Wrong! Apparently the device is Kia specific and of course the Boys didn't have one. Next, it was off to Strauss Auto parts where I got the same story. There's an Autozone some distance from my house but it was getting late and we didn't feel like traveling out there on what would probably turn out to be a fool's errand.

Tomorrow, I'll go to the Kia dealer but there's no guarantee they'll have it in stock. Almost every part I've needed for the Kia (and believe me there have been many) not only has to be ordered but generally takes a week to arrive. In October, we needed a wiper motor and it took a week and a half for Kia to get it for us.

And so the Odyssey continues.

For those of you who don't own Kias,
Happy Motoring!

[D323]

The tragedy continues. This afternoon, my wife comes home from work in the green excrescence (our affectionate name for the Kia) with a headlight problem. The low beams are inoperative but the high beams work normally. Since there's a single 25A fuse for the headlight circuit, it's obvious the problem doesn't lie there. Equally obvious, it must be the hi-lo beam relay so I go to the fuse/relay box in the engine compartment and pull the relay. Of course it's dark out now but fortunately I have a 90W halogen floodlight in my driveway and between that and the lantern my wife is holding there's just enough light to do the job.

Whichever company makes the relay, it's labeled with the Kia name. Of all the cars I've owned, I've never had a headlight relay go bad so I'm sure Kia told the electric company to make the cheapest, POS relay they could devise, just like every other part incorporated into the marque.

Then, it's into my trusty '02 DX and off to Pep Boys we go. I figured that headlight relays are pretty generic devices so several auto electric companies must make a replacement. Wrong! Apparently the device is Kia specific and of course the Boys didn't have one. Next, it was off to Strauss Auto parts where I got the same story. There's an Autozone some distance from my house but it was getting late and we didn't feel like traveling out there on what would probably turn out to be a fool's errand.

Tomorrow, I'll go to the Kia dealer but there's no guarantee they'll have it in stock. Almost every part I've needed for the Kia (and believe me there have been many) not only has to be ordered but generally takes a week to arrive. In October, we needed a wiper motor and it took a week and a half for Kia to get it for us.

And so the Odyssey continues.

For those of you who don't own Kias,
Happy Motoring!

same thing happened for my girlfriends mother... he horn relay went and took 2 weeks to recieve and fix.

and mannydingo I see BP GS kias all the time.. I rob bolts and other small parts that the dealer would charge a premium for.

[mannydingo]

D323, I don't doubt you see them. But don't we also see Protege's galore for the same time period? Most aren't wrecked either. Yet we know Proteges are good cars, in general. That's even taking into consideration that more Proteges than Kias were sold(not every year). Once again, I agree most Kias are crap. That doesn't mean all of them. My brother had a 96 Kia Sportage. When I first drove it after he bought it brand new, I thought, this tranny is going to break right after the warranty expires. That's how clunk & junk it sounded. It never did. My brother drove an hour to work and an hour back every day during rush hour because he moved from central Miami up to north Fort Lauderdale and east to the beach. He kept the same job. The interior parts would come unglued and a bunch of other minor things but never did the engine or tranny go bad. He sold it working perfectly. The only problem the car ever had engine-wise was his own doing. He changed the timing belt and left it off a tooth. The dealership actually corrected the problem under warranty as if it were their fault. Still, I agree the Sephia is normally junk and I wouldn't buy one, myself.

[91ProtegeLX]

If you like dick between your ass cheeks, then you own a kia sephia.

[mannydingo]

Man, you must have been bored to search around and post on this thread where the last post was 6 months ago.

[LisaT]

so you own a kia darren?

[Turpro]

so you own a kia darren?

hahahaha. owned

[Jho]

LMAO! That's good **** there!