A Look at the Kia Optima Hybrid: A Mixed Bag

As I took the Kia Optima hybrid out for a road test, I was immediately struck by its quiet operation. The ACM (Automatic Climate Control) system seemed to be doing its job effectively, muffling any noise that might have otherwise been present. However, when it came to the engine, I was underwhelmed. It ran smoothly enough, but the transmission left much to be desired. The six-speed automatic transmission felt a bit wonky, with a noticeable lag between gear shifts. While not overly impressive, this was certainly not unexpected given the Optima's hybrid nature.

One thing that did impress me was the acceleration. With 199 horsepower combined from both the gasoline and electric motors, I expected a more robust response to my inputs. Unfortunately, the car just didn't seem to have much power to spare. The acceleration felt glacial, and even at high speeds, it struggled to keep up with more potent vehicles. I couldn't help but feel that 200 horsepower was being underutilized.

The cabin temperature control also left a lot to be desired. With the ACM engaged, I found myself having to stick my head up against the ceiling vent just to get any decent airflow. This wasn't exactly ideal on hot days like today, when a bit more oomph from the air conditioning system would have been welcome.

Another feature that failed to impress was the manual shift option. The transmission hardly engaged at all, and the downshift lag was noticeable. It felt as though I was driving an automatic with a half-hearted attempt at a manual mode.

The real kicker came when we hit a high speed on the highway. Suddenly, the car's main fuse blew, stranding us along the side of the road. The repair crew that eventually showed up seemed to think that upgrading the fuse from 135amps to 150amps would fix the problem. While it may have been enough for them, I was less than convinced.

After spending some time with the Optima hybrid, I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed by its performance and reliability. At a price point of nearly $34,000 in 2014, this car seemed overpriced. The lackluster acceleration, questionable transmission, and general lack of dependability made it a hard sell for me.

In comparison to other hybrid vehicles on the market, such as the Toyota Prius, the Kia Optima simply couldn't hold a candle. While the Prius has sold millions of units worldwide, I couldn't help but wonder if that was due to its reputation for reliability and overall performance.

That being said, there was one silver lining - the Optima's 100,000-mile warranty still applies in many cases. This may have provided some comfort to owners who were concerned about maintenance costs down the line.

Overall, my experience with the Kia Optima hybrid left a lot to be desired. While it had its moments of quiet competence, the car's lackluster performance and questionable reliability made it a hard sell for me. If you're in the market for a new vehicle, I'd recommend looking elsewhere - perhaps to Toyota or another more reputable brand.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin the case of this volvo lights get dim warning lights come on go off realize the first thing you always want to check in that situation is the battery itself but where's it hiding i can't find it well the stupid swedes they're hitting it inside the trunk which is a very dumb thing to do because then the battery cables have to be in the trunk of the whole way to the front of the engine the more wiring you have the more chance you have of having problems and of course the longer the wires the more power you lose over distance that's why we use ac in our house because dc loses power over distance where ac really doesn't so we gotta go inside here a lot pods crap out it has a battery so we'll test it at 640 we'll put it to 600 and away we go good battery so we know the battery's good it's got 723 amps so we'll leave the tester here and we'll use the alternator checking part of it to check the alternator even though the alternator is hiding here we got to test it on the back which is another problem of putting the battery in the back the alternator guess what charges the battery but it's way back there so it starts to get weak it's got to strain more to go all that way it's a stupid design put a batter in the trunk they just do it cause oh the engineers can do as they please they can squeeze more crap under the hood but it's stupid to have the battery further away from the alternator than necessary which often leads to alternator problems in these volvos common occurrence and sure enough after running the alternator test it shows that the alternator is bad it's got bad diodes in it realize that alternators are called alternators because they actually create alternating electricity and the diodes inside turn that into direct electricity when they go bad all kinds of weird stuff growing your car because they can actually end up getting some ac ripple through the system which makes a dc system just go banana so we gotta replace the alternator on this volvo and that's not a particularly fun job because on this design the power steering pump is on top of the alternator so we got to remove the power steering pump and the belt we just removed the negative battery terminal boy i don't give you much working room on this thing get a little looser wow some swine invented this one crazy squeeze design but finally put that by the side then nothing will short out now of course the swedes have to do something moronic the tensioner has a special hole you need a tool to loosen it up you can't even see it so i got to get my borescope out to take a look and when i look i can see it's a star pattern luckily for me or perhaps on luckily because i work on these pieces of crap a lot i got a whole set of them so i just see which one fits in that hole tp55 that fits in there somebody should shoot these people for designing crap like this what's wrong with the bolt there's nothing wrong with the regular bolt then as we pull on that it loosens the belt and we can get it off the power steering pump first slides off now you can't possibly do this job without that tool so you definitely need that tool if you're going to do it on a stupid boat then we unbolt the power steering pump because everything's going to fall in so have a magnet with a stick ready then you can fish all the pieces out as they fall in so you don't lose them then you can kind of wiggle it out of the way we don't want to make a mess now here it's a good idea to already have your replacement alternator because it's kind of put on weird you can see here it's a bolt on the top but there's two stupid bolts on the bottom these bottom ones we're gonna have to remove this whole giant radiator hose and make a mess all i can say is they sure have their fingers up their rear ends when they design these cars they don't plan on having them repaired without going through a bunch of mess my toyota i can change the alternator in five minutes without making any mess this thing just poorly designed maybe that's one reason volvo doesn't exist as a swedish company more the chinese own them and they claim they're only going to make electric and hybrid electric cars and none of these gasoline ones anymore so we'll throw a pan to catch the coolant then we unscrew the hose and pop it off with a big screwdriver then we can access the 10 millimeter bolts which you can't even see but you can see on the new alternator where they go here and here you can't see it there's no working room you can feel it to get them up then you take those bolts out that mount the alternator then you unbolt the power wire and wiggle the alternator out there's not much working room you wiggle like mad eventually it'll come out this was certainly an afterthought almost there it's like giving birth look at that who would design something that poorly then comes the fun of wiggling the new alternator in but hey at least you got gravity on your side this time then you have to bolt the power cord on and plug the other wire in then you want to bolt the alternator back in place and put the radiator hoses back on then bolt the power steering pump back on then you gotta use your wrench and wiggle wiggle and snap the belt on then reconnect the negative battery terminal and that's not wiggling and don't forget to put the coolant that fell out when you took the hose off and start her off success customer just told me this ram these stupid semi-keyless remotes dumbest system ever vehicle won't start so what are we gonna do well let's start by turning the key and seeing what happens stick the key in well the lights come on so at least we turn the key off turn the key on there's power there but when we turn the key nothing that is the door now so with the key on let's turn the headlights on go outside see what happens well the headlights are coming on so there's power going through the system but you never know how much power the battery has so let's open hood and check it typical dodge the hood won't even stay up they make them like such pieces of crap so we need a stick so test the battery one tester on here and one tester on there and since it says right here 790 cold crank enhance we'll check that it's in the vehicle battery top post regular call cranking and we'll put it on 790. then we push start we'll see what it says state of health is not that great it says it needs a recharge but that is going to be why it's not starting it needs recharging but it's got enough should crank the engine it's not doing anything so something's wrong between the battery and the ignition switch going to the starter odds are it's this system there's such pieces of crap god knows chrysler has enough problems building cars that it is to add this stuff onto it to make it another level of crap that breaks on them so hook up my fancy scan tool and pray it finds something wrong with the system with a code so we don't have to check absolutely everything on this pile of junk so i'll plug it in under the dash and pray at least read the vehicle now we can see if it shows anything wrong typical dodge it already shows that there are eight vaults in the powertrain control module we'll see what codes exist there in a pcm whole bunch of them cylinder one misfire evap purge that's not it that's not it brake pressure sensor incompatible implausible oil pressure out of range and the lows are really starting problems the central gateway is twofold so let's check that yeah those really aren't going to be why it's not starting either so i'm going to try a trick i'm going to erase all the codes this machine can erase all the codes on it see if that's going to help at all sometimes strangely enough it does now they're all erased then i'm going to try another trick we're going to remove the battery terminals one and the other then with the remove we're going to touch them together to reset everything drying everything then leave them off for about five minutes that way it can reset everything back to factory settings to some extent sometimes it'll start right up then let's see all right we'll put them back on first the negative tighten it up in the positive that's nice and tight now we'll see what happens well sad but true stupid thing still isn't going to start so we know we turn the key on we're getting power i'm going to hot wire the starter see if it'll suck down that's pretty easy on that you get in on the driver's side crawl under and under here is the starter and somebody's already gotten the wire frayed here so you can check it we will put a jumper cable right here on the starter line then reach under here and fish the line up gotta be a truck that's way up in the air and i'm not 80 feet tall here so bear with me as i grab the stupid thing here's the wire now if we put it on a positive cable it should make the starter at least turn over nothing probably a bad starter and here's a good test look this up so now it's connected then we get a big hammer and go back under the vehicle and gave it a few whacks well it's not starting but that doesn't mean it's not the problem we didn't get lucky on this a lot of times the starter still has some life left when you whack it with power going to it the stupid thing will at least start to crank over in this case it's not even doing that so we're gonna have to pull the starter off and then check it in the air to see if it works at all so we'll take the battery terminal off so we don't shorten anything off when we remove the starter then crawl back under and unbolt the starter and take the power lines off here and up comes the starter and there's dodge for you this tiny little starter for this huge hemi engine and i can smell it it's burnt out i don't even have to test it's hot now and i can smell it just burn out cheap starter on a big engine and here's a replacement tiny starter that's all they had to fit on the stupid thing at least locally if you really want to do a better job you can try to find a racing starter that's a lot better than this piece of crap but this is just the guy's work truck so i'm just putting the same thing back on so it just slides back in hall and you put the two bolts in the bottom of the top get them on nice and tight and don't forget to do the top one too there are two of them holding it on then you get the big power cable and put it on a nut on top of it and tighten that up then get the starter wire here and that just plugs right on there snaps right on nice and tight and don't forget to put the battery cable back on and put it on nice and tight there we go then let's pray it didn't short the computer out even the computer on this thing has to do with starting the car and sometimes i see if the starter shorts out it can fry the computer so let's pray it didn't well here goes nothing as you can see when i scan it has a bunch of other things wrong but typical dodge he wants this thing to start now it's starting and i'm stopping right there now this is a 2014 kia optima hybrid the original list price was like thirty two thousand four hundred dollars for this particular model he bought it used and he paid 17 out the door they wanted more it said a lot a long time they don't sell like hotcakes to say the least and he offered them 17 they said no and then they called them back if you come right now we'll sell it to you out the door for 17. paid almost half of what the new one was with that small amount of mileage he hasn't put any money into it yet but since this fall the coolant's been leaking a little and his wife was driving it the other day down the road and just died and it turns out it was the main fuse for the hybrid system things do wear out but i'm always leery myself when a main fuse blows it's a big amp fuse it takes a lot to blow one of those fuses we'll put our scan tool on do a little analysis now originally it was 125 amp and a dealer looked up a bunch of stuff they replaced it with a 150 amp i don't know about that the engineers put fuses for a certain rating for a reason and all of a sudden they start throwing higher ones in i'm assuming they're finding that the hybrid battery's taking a little more power than it should as at age so they're bumping the fuse up so it doesn't keep popping the fuse let's hook up the scan tool see what it says now i do have to say that kia does have a hundred thousand mile warranty on a hybrid system and he had the stuff fixed to free they didn't charge him anything so he's thinking about he gets 200 000 miles get rid of the thing because his other car's a toyota corolla that's never broken down and it's a 2003. it's a lot older than this thing is and it's never broken at all and see there's no global codes everything's green so let's start it up even though it's not going to do anything because it's a hybrid and it's just sitting here we'll put the ac on because i'm hot as can be you hear the engine's coming on now the ac can run a little while with the engine turn off but not that long that turns engine back on but i'm really disappointed because nothing like my toilet or lexus blow big stream i'm not getting enough air on me as far as i'm concerned let's go to system oem enhanced about 14 kia auto hybrid yes here we go now there's no enhanced daddy either gonna check everything and that's awful on one of these hybrids you can't mess around with these things unless you have a high level scanner this is the lowest level scanner that i would ever use on one of these if things really got hairy i'd get out my 5 000 scanner this thing is rated at 35 miles a gallon highway and 37 in the city because it has regenerative bricks it's only getting 32 so it's getting kind of low gas mileage it's not that high mileage it's only 74 593 but now there's a scanner it's done all the modules let's look through the modules the seat belts we don't really care about that that stuff's a bunch of nonsense anyways the electric parking brake has codes so there's a smart junction box we'll check the smart junction box and see what that's uh turn signal right hand rear open circuit well it's working perfectly fine so who cares about that it also says turn signal left for your circuit open that works too so we can ignore that now you can see something squirrely because the calculated load value is 51 52 and the car's just idling we're not even moving dude the equivalence ratio is going 1.5321.487 1.47 it's kind of moving around as you can see now it's going all those ways now it's one now it's 0.984 it's really moving around a car that's just idling should not go all over the place like that that's probably one of the reasons it's getting pretty bad gas mileage for a car i mean i've seen these things get 38 39 this is only getting 32. as you can see now it's all the way to 1.484 it's all over the place now that's the bank one sensor one i would advise changing it there are actually a zillion things can affect it make it do weird things but with advanced lighting like crazy like that i would have that sense of change and since that's part of the anti-pollution system here should cover it under the hundred thousand mile warranty so really as an educated guest i'd say change bank one sensor one the air fuel ratio sensor it could be bad maybe the wiring is bad something's a missile the voltage is good in the control module so far i haven't seen anything weird other than that sensor data the engine has run 16 hours 19 minutes since a trouble code was cleared so this did have a trouble code at some point in time so he basically learned is it doesn't trip any codes now but it did 16 hours ago of run time it had a trouble code on it now the only tells me wish you would have seen my videos before he bought this because his whole corolla's never stranded him and this thing now is stranded at once and it's got the oddest thing it loses coolant but nobody can find where it's going took off it was on full now it's down a little bit now in one month he only has to add that little bit from the after the house not that much coolant but it's going somewhere and it shouldn't in a vehicle this new now i can't see any leaks anywhere so i'm going to tell them to put some ultraviolet leaf dye for the cooling system and then run it for a few weeks and as he adds coolant when it's cold look with the uv light and yellow sunglasses crates on a head gasket or something going you never know and i'm always going to tell them change the radiator cap could be as dumb as it's just seeping a little gas and it'll lose a little cooling over time now overall they're pretty basic engine stuff they got normal fuel injection on the intake it's not gdi it's not an extremely complicated car except for the hybrid system now you can see it's a relatively noisy engine but with this kind of mileage almost all kias sound like this the quality control in our factory isn't that great they've had to rebuild a lot of engines with timing chains valves piston rings they're not the most solid engines in the world but i do have to say this is probably a better one because this one was made in korea the ones that are made in the united states had a problem with some of the machinery building them that's why the engines blew up he was saying his friend had a one-year newer kia with a turbo they had to replace the guy's entire engine because it went out on him if you are going to get a kia get a korean one like this look at the door says made in korea it's a much better bet than buying one made over here from my experience let's take it for a road test now it's pretty quiet i got the acm but you can barely hear anything and the engine is running now gotta say it is very smooth not a fan of the transmission it's kind of wiggly wobbly now this does have a six-speed automatic transmission it's not a cvt but it's kind of wonky if you ask me i'm not impressed by either the acceleration or the indirectness of acceleration you get kind of a nothing happens and then it starts moving it makes an awful lot of noise and take into consideration that even though it was getting like 32 miles a gallon that was all done in eco mode the best gas mileage mode of them all not the power mode i got it in power mode now and it doesn't seem to have all that much power now it doesn't handle all that bad a little bit of oversteer but yeah nothing outrageous but let's see what this thing can do theoretically it has 199 horsepower with the gas motor and the electric motor so here we go well it's not throwing me back in my seat and like i say the tranny's a little wonky but 200 horsepower man doesn't feel like 200 horsepower it's weak on acceleration and i'm telling you as hot as it is today i wish these blowers blew about three times more volume air i got to stick my head way up here to get any cool air on me they just did not blow that well how you guys in korea where you made this car maybe it doesn't get that hot in korea i know it snows a lot in the winter but man it gets hot here in tennessee just like in texas and you need to upgrade your blower motors to get a little more oomph coming out when it's hot outside and i do have to say this manual shift option is absolute garbage it hardly do anything at all i mean you're going down the road you try to shift it can't even feel it do much you downshift there's a big lag before it kicks in i am not impressed by this transmission so in the case of this particular kia optima you get a hybrid you're supposed to have more acceleration with the electric motor and better gas mileage this thing has neither it doesn't have acceleration or gas mileage some of that could very well be the main oxygen sensor the air fuel ratio sensor the one on the top of the engine could be bad it was giving squarely data and if it gives squirrely data cars not gonna run right cause as it runs now this is not an impressive vehicle to say the least i've been in ones that ran a lot better than this but all in all considering this car was close to thirty four thousand dollars when it was new boy i could think of a lot of better things to do with thirty four thousand dollars though buy one of these things no wonder it sat on the lot for months before the guy bought it if i would have road tested this car i would have told people don't buy it there's something wrong with it it doesn't go fast enough doesn't get good enough gas mileage because really when you step on the gas yeah it makes noise but it really doesn't take off all that fast you got a real lag it just doesn't feel responsive and considering that the thing stranded along a highway and blew a main fuse and what they did was put a bigger fuse in it went from like 135 amp to 150 amp fuse to me boy i'd be sure to get rid of this thing before the 100 000 mile hybrid warranty was up for sure so now you know more about the kia optima hybrid and why they don't sell like hot cakes for the money not as dependable as the toyota not as zippy nowhere near the gas mileage way back then 2014 34 000 it's a lot of money to pay for a car like this and it's already stranded them so this certainly has convinced me that my idea about not buying kias is the right one to give to people especially with this thing that's why i said it a lot for a while used before they get solid i'm sure people tried it and they thought man it's not mine not in my cup of tea where the priuses they've sold millions of them he is not really that much of a hybrid company to begin with but on the plus side they still got a little bit left on their hundred thousand mile warranty so they can drive it around like he said when it gets near that it's probably time to say goodbye to this get another toyota so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell youin the case of this volvo lights get dim warning lights come on go off realize the first thing you always want to check in that situation is the battery itself but where's it hiding i can't find it well the stupid swedes they're hitting it inside the trunk which is a very dumb thing to do because then the battery cables have to be in the trunk of the whole way to the front of the engine the more wiring you have the more chance you have of having problems and of course the longer the wires the more power you lose over distance that's why we use ac in our house because dc loses power over distance where ac really doesn't so we gotta go inside here a lot pods crap out it has a battery so we'll test it at 640 we'll put it to 600 and away we go good battery so we know the battery's good it's got 723 amps so we'll leave the tester here and we'll use the alternator checking part of it to check the alternator even though the alternator is hiding here we got to test it on the back which is another problem of putting the battery in the back the alternator guess what charges the battery but it's way back there so it starts to get weak it's got to strain more to go all that way it's a stupid design put a batter in the trunk they just do it cause oh the engineers can do as they please they can squeeze more crap under the hood but it's stupid to have the battery further away from the alternator than necessary which often leads to alternator problems in these volvos common occurrence and sure enough after running the alternator test it shows that the alternator is bad it's got bad diodes in it realize that alternators are called alternators because they actually create alternating electricity and the diodes inside turn that into direct electricity when they go bad all kinds of weird stuff growing your car because they can actually end up getting some ac ripple through the system which makes a dc system just go banana so we gotta replace the alternator on this volvo and that's not a particularly fun job because on this design the power steering pump is on top of the alternator so we got to remove the power steering pump and the belt we just removed the negative battery terminal boy i don't give you much working room on this thing get a little looser wow some swine invented this one crazy squeeze design but finally put that by the side then nothing will short out now of course the swedes have to do something moronic the tensioner has a special hole you need a tool to loosen it up you can't even see it so i got to get my borescope out to take a look and when i look i can see it's a star pattern luckily for me or perhaps on luckily because i work on these pieces of crap a lot i got a whole set of them so i just see which one fits in that hole tp55 that fits in there somebody should shoot these people for designing crap like this what's wrong with the bolt there's nothing wrong with the regular bolt then as we pull on that it loosens the belt and we can get it off the power steering pump first slides off now you can't possibly do this job without that tool so you definitely need that tool if you're going to do it on a stupid boat then we unbolt the power steering pump because everything's going to fall in so have a magnet with a stick ready then you can fish all the pieces out as they fall in so you don't lose them then you can kind of wiggle it out of the way we don't want to make a mess now here it's a good idea to already have your replacement alternator because it's kind of put on weird you can see here it's a bolt on the top but there's two stupid bolts on the bottom these bottom ones we're gonna have to remove this whole giant radiator hose and make a mess all i can say is they sure have their fingers up their rear ends when they design these cars they don't plan on having them repaired without going through a bunch of mess my toyota i can change the alternator in five minutes without making any mess this thing just poorly designed maybe that's one reason volvo doesn't exist as a swedish company more the chinese own them and they claim they're only going to make electric and hybrid electric cars and none of these gasoline ones anymore so we'll throw a pan to catch the coolant then we unscrew the hose and pop it off with a big screwdriver then we can access the 10 millimeter bolts which you can't even see but you can see on the new alternator where they go here and here you can't see it there's no working room you can feel it to get them up then you take those bolts out that mount the alternator then you unbolt the power wire and wiggle the alternator out there's not much working room you wiggle like mad eventually it'll come out this was certainly an afterthought almost there it's like giving birth look at that who would design something that poorly then comes the fun of wiggling the new alternator in but hey at least you got gravity on your side this time then you have to bolt the power cord on and plug the other wire in then you want to bolt the alternator back in place and put the radiator hoses back on then bolt the power steering pump back on then you gotta use your wrench and wiggle wiggle and snap the belt on then reconnect the negative battery terminal and that's not wiggling and don't forget to put the coolant that fell out when you took the hose off and start her off success customer just told me this ram these stupid semi-keyless remotes dumbest system ever vehicle won't start so what are we gonna do well let's start by turning the key and seeing what happens stick the key in well the lights come on so at least we turn the key off turn the key on there's power there but when we turn the key nothing that is the door now so with the key on let's turn the headlights on go outside see what happens well the headlights are coming on so there's power going through the system but you never know how much power the battery has so let's open hood and check it typical dodge the hood won't even stay up they make them like such pieces of crap so we need a stick so test the battery one tester on here and one tester on there and since it says right here 790 cold crank enhance we'll check that it's in the vehicle battery top post regular call cranking and we'll put it on 790. then we push start we'll see what it says state of health is not that great it says it needs a recharge but that is going to be why it's not starting it needs recharging but it's got enough should crank the engine it's not doing anything so something's wrong between the battery and the ignition switch going to the starter odds are it's this system there's such pieces of crap god knows chrysler has enough problems building cars that it is to add this stuff onto it to make it another level of crap that breaks on them so hook up my fancy scan tool and pray it finds something wrong with the system with a code so we don't have to check absolutely everything on this pile of junk so i'll plug it in under the dash and pray at least read the vehicle now we can see if it shows anything wrong typical dodge it already shows that there are eight vaults in the powertrain control module we'll see what codes exist there in a pcm whole bunch of them cylinder one misfire evap purge that's not it that's not it brake pressure sensor incompatible implausible oil pressure out of range and the lows are really starting problems the central gateway is twofold so let's check that yeah those really aren't going to be why it's not starting either so i'm going to try a trick i'm going to erase all the codes this machine can erase all the codes on it see if that's going to help at all sometimes strangely enough it does now they're all erased then i'm going to try another trick we're going to remove the battery terminals one and the other then with the remove we're going to touch them together to reset everything drying everything then leave them off for about five minutes that way it can reset everything back to factory settings to some extent sometimes it'll start right up then let's see all right we'll put them back on first the negative tighten it up in the positive that's nice and tight now we'll see what happens well sad but true stupid thing still isn't going to start so we know we turn the key on we're getting power i'm going to hot wire the starter see if it'll suck down that's pretty easy on that you get in on the driver's side crawl under and under here is the starter and somebody's already gotten the wire frayed here so you can check it we will put a jumper cable right here on the starter line then reach under here and fish the line up gotta be a truck that's way up in the air and i'm not 80 feet tall here so bear with me as i grab the stupid thing here's the wire now if we put it on a positive cable it should make the starter at least turn over nothing probably a bad starter and here's a good test look this up so now it's connected then we get a big hammer and go back under the vehicle and gave it a few whacks well it's not starting but that doesn't mean it's not the problem we didn't get lucky on this a lot of times the starter still has some life left when you whack it with power going to it the stupid thing will at least start to crank over in this case it's not even doing that so we're gonna have to pull the starter off and then check it in the air to see if it works at all so we'll take the battery terminal off so we don't shorten anything off when we remove the starter then crawl back under and unbolt the starter and take the power lines off here and up comes the starter and there's dodge for you this tiny little starter for this huge hemi engine and i can smell it it's burnt out i don't even have to test it's hot now and i can smell it just burn out cheap starter on a big engine and here's a replacement tiny starter that's all they had to fit on the stupid thing at least locally if you really want to do a better job you can try to find a racing starter that's a lot better than this piece of crap but this is just the guy's work truck so i'm just putting the same thing back on so it just slides back in hall and you put the two bolts in the bottom of the top get them on nice and tight and don't forget to do the top one too there are two of them holding it on then you get the big power cable and put it on a nut on top of it and tighten that up then get the starter wire here and that just plugs right on there snaps right on nice and tight and don't forget to put the battery cable back on and put it on nice and tight there we go then let's pray it didn't short the computer out even the computer on this thing has to do with starting the car and sometimes i see if the starter shorts out it can fry the computer so let's pray it didn't well here goes nothing as you can see when i scan it has a bunch of other things wrong but typical dodge he wants this thing to start now it's starting and i'm stopping right there now this is a 2014 kia optima hybrid the original list price was like thirty two thousand four hundred dollars for this particular model he bought it used and he paid 17 out the door they wanted more it said a lot a long time they don't sell like hotcakes to say the least and he offered them 17 they said no and then they called them back if you come right now we'll sell it to you out the door for 17. paid almost half of what the new one was with that small amount of mileage he hasn't put any money into it yet but since this fall the coolant's been leaking a little and his wife was driving it the other day down the road and just died and it turns out it was the main fuse for the hybrid system things do wear out but i'm always leery myself when a main fuse blows it's a big amp fuse it takes a lot to blow one of those fuses we'll put our scan tool on do a little analysis now originally it was 125 amp and a dealer looked up a bunch of stuff they replaced it with a 150 amp i don't know about that the engineers put fuses for a certain rating for a reason and all of a sudden they start throwing higher ones in i'm assuming they're finding that the hybrid battery's taking a little more power than it should as at age so they're bumping the fuse up so it doesn't keep popping the fuse let's hook up the scan tool see what it says now i do have to say that kia does have a hundred thousand mile warranty on a hybrid system and he had the stuff fixed to free they didn't charge him anything so he's thinking about he gets 200 000 miles get rid of the thing because his other car's a toyota corolla that's never broken down and it's a 2003. it's a lot older than this thing is and it's never broken at all and see there's no global codes everything's green so let's start it up even though it's not going to do anything because it's a hybrid and it's just sitting here we'll put the ac on because i'm hot as can be you hear the engine's coming on now the ac can run a little while with the engine turn off but not that long that turns engine back on but i'm really disappointed because nothing like my toilet or lexus blow big stream i'm not getting enough air on me as far as i'm concerned let's go to system oem enhanced about 14 kia auto hybrid yes here we go now there's no enhanced daddy either gonna check everything and that's awful on one of these hybrids you can't mess around with these things unless you have a high level scanner this is the lowest level scanner that i would ever use on one of these if things really got hairy i'd get out my 5 000 scanner this thing is rated at 35 miles a gallon highway and 37 in the city because it has regenerative bricks it's only getting 32 so it's getting kind of low gas mileage it's not that high mileage it's only 74 593 but now there's a scanner it's done all the modules let's look through the modules the seat belts we don't really care about that that stuff's a bunch of nonsense anyways the electric parking brake has codes so there's a smart junction box we'll check the smart junction box and see what that's uh turn signal right hand rear open circuit well it's working perfectly fine so who cares about that it also says turn signal left for your circuit open that works too so we can ignore that now you can see something squirrely because the calculated load value is 51 52 and the car's just idling we're not even moving dude the equivalence ratio is going 1.5321.487 1.47 it's kind of moving around as you can see now it's going all those ways now it's one now it's 0.984 it's really moving around a car that's just idling should not go all over the place like that that's probably one of the reasons it's getting pretty bad gas mileage for a car i mean i've seen these things get 38 39 this is only getting 32. as you can see now it's all the way to 1.484 it's all over the place now that's the bank one sensor one i would advise changing it there are actually a zillion things can affect it make it do weird things but with advanced lighting like crazy like that i would have that sense of change and since that's part of the anti-pollution system here should cover it under the hundred thousand mile warranty so really as an educated guest i'd say change bank one sensor one the air fuel ratio sensor it could be bad maybe the wiring is bad something's a missile the voltage is good in the control module so far i haven't seen anything weird other than that sensor data the engine has run 16 hours 19 minutes since a trouble code was cleared so this did have a trouble code at some point in time so he basically learned is it doesn't trip any codes now but it did 16 hours ago of run time it had a trouble code on it now the only tells me wish you would have seen my videos before he bought this because his whole corolla's never stranded him and this thing now is stranded at once and it's got the oddest thing it loses coolant but nobody can find where it's going took off it was on full now it's down a little bit now in one month he only has to add that little bit from the after the house not that much coolant but it's going somewhere and it shouldn't in a vehicle this new now i can't see any leaks anywhere so i'm going to tell them to put some ultraviolet leaf dye for the cooling system and then run it for a few weeks and as he adds coolant when it's cold look with the uv light and yellow sunglasses crates on a head gasket or something going you never know and i'm always going to tell them change the radiator cap could be as dumb as it's just seeping a little gas and it'll lose a little cooling over time now overall they're pretty basic engine stuff they got normal fuel injection on the intake it's not gdi it's not an extremely complicated car except for the hybrid system now you can see it's a relatively noisy engine but with this kind of mileage almost all kias sound like this the quality control in our factory isn't that great they've had to rebuild a lot of engines with timing chains valves piston rings they're not the most solid engines in the world but i do have to say this is probably a better one because this one was made in korea the ones that are made in the united states had a problem with some of the machinery building them that's why the engines blew up he was saying his friend had a one-year newer kia with a turbo they had to replace the guy's entire engine because it went out on him if you are going to get a kia get a korean one like this look at the door says made in korea it's a much better bet than buying one made over here from my experience let's take it for a road test now it's pretty quiet i got the acm but you can barely hear anything and the engine is running now gotta say it is very smooth not a fan of the transmission it's kind of wiggly wobbly now this does have a six-speed automatic transmission it's not a cvt but it's kind of wonky if you ask me i'm not impressed by either the acceleration or the indirectness of acceleration you get kind of a nothing happens and then it starts moving it makes an awful lot of noise and take into consideration that even though it was getting like 32 miles a gallon that was all done in eco mode the best gas mileage mode of them all not the power mode i got it in power mode now and it doesn't seem to have all that much power now it doesn't handle all that bad a little bit of oversteer but yeah nothing outrageous but let's see what this thing can do theoretically it has 199 horsepower with the gas motor and the electric motor so here we go well it's not throwing me back in my seat and like i say the tranny's a little wonky but 200 horsepower man doesn't feel like 200 horsepower it's weak on acceleration and i'm telling you as hot as it is today i wish these blowers blew about three times more volume air i got to stick my head way up here to get any cool air on me they just did not blow that well how you guys in korea where you made this car maybe it doesn't get that hot in korea i know it snows a lot in the winter but man it gets hot here in tennessee just like in texas and you need to upgrade your blower motors to get a little more oomph coming out when it's hot outside and i do have to say this manual shift option is absolute garbage it hardly do anything at all i mean you're going down the road you try to shift it can't even feel it do much you downshift there's a big lag before it kicks in i am not impressed by this transmission so in the case of this particular kia optima you get a hybrid you're supposed to have more acceleration with the electric motor and better gas mileage this thing has neither it doesn't have acceleration or gas mileage some of that could very well be the main oxygen sensor the air fuel ratio sensor the one on the top of the engine could be bad it was giving squarely data and if it gives squirrely data cars not gonna run right cause as it runs now this is not an impressive vehicle to say the least i've been in ones that ran a lot better than this but all in all considering this car was close to thirty four thousand dollars when it was new boy i could think of a lot of better things to do with thirty four thousand dollars though buy one of these things no wonder it sat on the lot for months before the guy bought it if i would have road tested this car i would have told people don't buy it there's something wrong with it it doesn't go fast enough doesn't get good enough gas mileage because really when you step on the gas yeah it makes noise but it really doesn't take off all that fast you got a real lag it just doesn't feel responsive and considering that the thing stranded along a highway and blew a main fuse and what they did was put a bigger fuse in it went from like 135 amp to 150 amp fuse to me boy i'd be sure to get rid of this thing before the 100 000 mile hybrid warranty was up for sure so now you know more about the kia optima hybrid and why they don't sell like hot cakes for the money not as dependable as the toyota not as zippy nowhere near the gas mileage way back then 2014 34 000 it's a lot of money to pay for a car like this and it's already stranded them so this certainly has convinced me that my idea about not buying kias is the right one to give to people especially with this thing that's why i said it a lot for a while used before they get solid i'm sure people tried it and they thought man it's not mine not in my cup of tea where the priuses they've sold millions of them he is not really that much of a hybrid company to begin with but on the plus side they still got a little bit left on their hundred thousand mile warranty so they can drive it around like he said when it gets near that it's probably time to say goodbye to this get another toyota so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell you\n"