More Kias Recalled For, You Guessed It, Fire Risks, Though Most Are Sitting At Dealer Lots

A total of 26 Kia Sorentos built from March 3rd until March 8th of this year are being recalled for potential fire risk. Kia is concerned that these vehicles have an issue where oil can leak out of the engine and ultimately cause a fire. Thankfully, it seems that most if not all of the affected SUVs may not have even been delivered to customers at this point.

On March 7th, corporate partner, Hyundai, notified Kia that a number of non-Kia vehicles had been found with an oil leak from the turbocharger feed pipe. In addition, 381 engines with that same potential issue had been sent to Kia from Hyundai for assembly into Kia products.

The next day, Kia went into detective mode and started tracking down and checking all of the potentially affected powertrains. By the 17th, it had found a total of 26 affected vehicles that were either at or in transit to dealers. Each one uses the same 2.5-liter T-GDI turbocharged V6.

Related: U.S. Starts New Investigation Into Hyundai And Kia Fires Dating Back To 2011

At the heart of the issue with that turbo feed line is a manufacturing error that could cause a crack in the eye joint of the pipe. Aside from the fact that the part itself is buried so deep into the engine that you can’t see it, the crack in the eye itself might be small enough that tracking down a leak after the fact would’ve been very difficult.

For its part, Kia decided to issue a recall for each one of the 26 vehicles involved and to replace the pipe altogether. Kia says that three of the vehicles have already been addressed and that Hyundai held a field action decision meeting on March 21st to address any of its products that use the same engine.

This certainly isn’t the first time that Kia has been saddled with fire-risk-related recalls. Over the last decade, some 7,000,000 units between Hyundai and Kia have been recalled with fire-related concerns. In February of this year, the two companies issued a warning to affected customers to park their vehicles outside until repairs could be completed in a totally separate recall.