First post, been doing a bit of research and this seems like a well-frequented and knowledgeable place so here I am!

On 27th November I bought from a Hyundai franchised dealer (and paid for by cheque) a Hyundai i30 Diesel which first registered in January 2010. It had then 1900 miles and was an ex-Hyundai 'staff car'. I test-drove the car and noticed nothing untoward, or at least having driven my previous car 6 years must have overlooked any issue I had with the gearchange as down to unfamiliarity.

I sold my old car privately, waiting until all that snow passed, so didn't collect the Hyundai until 19th January 2011. From the outset I found the gearchange difficult from 1st to 2nd, especially when cold though the car had a poor gearchange in general. There were other issues too including pitting on the 'plastic chrome' wheel inserts and noise from the suspension.

I tolerated it all a while, waiting to see if the gearchange would come good (or I would learn to drive around it) but by early February I had contacted the service department of the supplying dealer and booked it in. I had no intention of rejecting the car as I thought it could be fixed and was otherwise very happy. On 15th February I wrote the Sales Manager a letter and outlined the problems, telling him that the car was coming back on 21st February (the earliest they could give me a loan car) and I was returning it under the Sale Of Goods Act on the basis that the car would be repaired else replaced.

I dropped the car off on 21st February and to be honest then lose track of the dates. The garage had decided to replace the gearbox under warranty but the gearbox was on back-order and took around a month to arrive. I had the loan car only a few days and told them to collect it as I would use my wife's car due to £750 insurance excess!!! So towards the end of March the car returned with a new gearbox but the suspension and wheel parts were still on back-order.

I quickly found the gearchange no better but stupidly put nothing in writing, I agreed for them to look at it again when the car returned for the suspension and wheel parts. Time passed and I chased them two or three times before around mid-May the parts arrived and they collected the car. They had it a few days under my instructions to drive it as required in order to diagnose the gearbox issue. Despite that, they decided there is nothing wrong with the gearchange and returned the car to me no better.

So there we stand, they know I am still not satisfied and ahve agreed to look again but I'm fed up of it all now. My step-father has a similar car, as have two work colleuges and quick drives in those three cars reveal a totally different gearchange to that of mine. I have no idea how the garage can think mine normal!

So, a long read later, what should I do now? What are my rights as at 10th June having used the car for around 2600 miles (1000 of which was in the first 2 weeks)?

I look forward to some opinions and advice, many thanks.

I fully understand your problem and here is the crux of the matter.

Your complaint is subjective. I see this all the time. It might be that the gear change standard is as designed, is something that might take a bit of getting used to. It's a bit like inherrant design issues in any car, it might not suit you but the manufactuers stats might come back with that for example, we have have 10,000 same cars in the market with 2 complaints, one of which was yours, the other a definite fault. They have changed the box, which is not incidentaly, an indicationthat there is anything wrong, more likely they are looking for evidence of any market failures of a major component which might give them problems in the future.

So therfore they have followed the correct procedure. Secondly, the insurance excess is something you can insure against. Contary to popular belief, you are not automatically entitled to a replacement courtesy car either and any car offered is subject to their terms and conditions.

Reading between the lines and respectfully I think you might be getting a bit excited here as the reality is that there may me nothing wrong with the car....that is how it is. In order to prove this you will have to get evidence of like for like (not easy) or ask them to demonstrate a similar car to prove the issues are as standard.

Forget the car you previously had, it's irrelevant.

Many thanks heliosuk. Yes, it is very difficult to prove definitively that there is a fault rather than it being a characteristic.

In my defence, I actually spent over 15 years in the motor trade and drove 1000's of cars in that time, not one car 'beat' me. That is why I have given the car and myself time to gel but it's just not working.

I cannot accept that a gearbox should baulk and let out a fair old crunch when trying to change gear and the clutch is pressed to the floor. In addition, the three others I have driven are completely different, I just cannot get the garage to agree! The other fact is that reading on Hyundai forums I am not the only person to have had issues, though there are not hundreds of us for sure.

The garage are being most helpful, to be honest I can't fault them but I think your suggestion of getting them to demonstrate a similar car is the next step. If I feel the same way after that then would you suggest and AA/RAC report and/or what other moves next?

I cannot accept that a gearbox should baulk and let out a fair old crunch when trying to change gear and the clutch is pressed to the floor. ?????

dont sound like gearbox fault to me !

i should be looking at possible problem with clutch master cylinder or slave cylinder issue ( this would also explain problem still present after the ne w gearbox was fitted) first thing though is to have them bleed the clucth system to ensure there is no air trapped in fluid especially as you say when the car has been left standing for some time !!

Problem today si that if the computer does nto show up a fault, the dealer mechanic is stuffed as thney will have no idea where to look. I bet if you took it to an old fashion mechanic, they will diagnose the problem within 10 minutes. Too many of us are being fobbed off with the "its a trait/characteristic of the car" We had a long ensuring battle with Ford on a 201 Mondeo auto. The gearbox had a problem in it, but they could not resolve the issue. Happily we got a full refund after having the car for nearly 8 months and 8000 miles. Ford agreed that there was an issue but said it was a trait in the auto gearbox that could not be resolved easily and not without great cost to thmselves. Otherwise a fine motor car to drive..

Very few manual gearboxes have any sort of electronic control so you can rule out that "the computer says no fault"

As GB says it does look like perhaps a clutch issue. Gearbox manufacturing tolerances are very tight so usually nowadays, as opposed to years ago, they should not realy need bedding in. What's interesting is that a replacement box does not improve the situation so the dealer needs to look elsewhere and the clutch system is the first place to look. The odd thing is that if it was a faulty clutch causing the problem you would expect the box to baulk when selecting first or reverse, not with changing from first to second.

I'm not familiar with the Hyundai change mechanism but again I would suggest that they look at that and compare a good car against yours in terms of angles and lengths of rods or cables. They should also look at subframe alignment as this can be 1 to 2 mm out, not generally noticable but enough to put a rod out of alignment. They could loosen off the subframe bolts, put the car down and push back and forth a few times. This will centralise everything but will also mean rechecking the geometry of the suspension/steering system.

Given it's age and the fact it has had a replacement box, I would have thought that they should have notified Hyundai by now and asked for technical support. This is what I tell dealers. If you don't get it fixed right first time, ask for help from the manufactuer.It does take the heat off them and the manufactuer usually knows if there are issues elsewhere around the world!

Hope that helps!

Surfer you giving wrong advice im afraid !! if you take modern cars to old school mechanics they are usually the ones thats struggle not us modern guys, the electronics on cars these days ( with all there pulses and signals ) have the old guys completely baffled by it all and there is no such thing as go back to basics and find a fault in 10 mins, problem is the cars have gone beyond being basic in the fist place so where are the basics to go back to ??, and as for the modern guy putting it on a diag machine and then that machine not showing anything does not mean thats the end of the job if you know what your doing ( both mechancally and with correct use of the diagnostics machine) i have seen so many peeple carry out a code read and just because it says no fault found it is then assumed there is no fault but there are many things to check on diagnostics including live data which is only as usefull as the guy that is reading it ( he must be knowledgable in interpreting those reading aswell as graph data and programming data aswell) these are all things that the old school guys usually have no understanding of at all , to those guys a circuit is 12 volts and two wires ( positive and earth) and thats where there knowledge ends in most cases , oh how easy it would be if it were like that today instead of pulse generated signals and various resistances to deal with, i am one of the ones that undertand the modern diagnostics and i would never say to a customer ( no fault codes found) and then leave it at that, i probly wont find faults in 10 mins either but tthe way it is these days very few faults can be found in that time by anyone, dont knock us guys that do diagnostic work when some of us do know the field and continually learn ourselves as we are constantly bombarded with ever changing designs and systems of the modern cars, i am sure i can show the old school guys a thing or two and in respect for them im sure they could aslo learn me a few things too

Having had my Mondeo in and out of Ford nearly every month since we took delivery I have no faith in today's mechnanic. However I do understand what you are saying about code reading etc but in our case it was no fault code therefore nothing wroing. We have now bought a 1996 Toyota with a proper automatic torque convertor gearbox and what a diference.

Back to the OP however. There is always the possibility that they never changed the clutch at all. Many years ago when I was able to drive a manual, the issue I had was that one of the "rods" for the synro was bent causing difficulty in selecting a gear. That is about as much a I know as my mechanical knowledge is very limited.

Well I've been speaking to the dealers again and they were, as always, helpful. Can't fault their willing.

I am going there one day this week with my wife's car, the Service Manager and I will then come back to my house with me driving his mechanically-identical-to-mine car. He will then drive my car from cold, which is when it is very unwilling to actually come out of first gear once moving. Once warmed a bit that fault is better but there will still be plenty of baulking and crunching into second gear.

The Sales Manager is looking into finding me a replacement car, in the event we can agree that mine is not the same as his Service Manager's. Money may change hands if it is a younger example etc and I have no issues with that if needs be.

As you guys are suggesting (and it seems highly likely now I have a new gearbox), suspicions are falling on the clutch, I think specifically a hydraulics issue such as air in the system. That kind of thing might explain the inconsistencies with the gearchange. I am also becoming a bit suspicious that the car may have had a front-end impact before I bought it (panel gaps not consistent), the repair of which may have left something not as it should be.

Anyway, that's jumping ahead so I will take them up on the offer to drive their's/they drive mine and see where we go. I'll let you know how it goes but many thanks to all for now.

We have a 2006 Tuscon, still only just in warranty and suffering the same gearbox problem which only occurred since it went in for its last service.

Since then it has been back in around 6 times having various parts replaced (Including the clutch hydraulics) despite the service manager stating that it needed a new gearbox from the outset, Hyundai said they must fix it.

We are at a point now where they still have the car, but this time the fault isn't evident to them so they aren't prepared to fix it, when clearly there is a fault as why would they have replaced so many parts.

I don't blame the dealership, they are just the middleman for the brand. But they will have to be stuck with the problem as it looks like we will be taking legal advice before the car runs out of warranty. From out research the car isn't fit for purpose and not being able to change from 1st to 2nd without forcing it will eventually lead to an accident across and intersection or damaging the engine from having to red line it to get clear in 1st gear.

Apart from the gear box issue that only occurred since the car was last serviced, it has been a really good vehicle. All I want is it back working properly and my faith returned in the brand as I do quite like the spec of the Santa Fe and was considering trading up to that had this problem not raised it's head.