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The nightmare continues.

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We thought we’d found the perfect used car for our 19 year old niece. A 2008 Hyundai Sante Fe with only 60,000 miles. It was clean, had new tires, brakes, struts, alternator and battery. It rode well and shifted smoothly.

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It was a one owner car with a clean record.

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The price was on the low end of a fair market range.

But because I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t trust anyone, we took it to our trusted mechanic/old friend for a once over.

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He crawled under it to check for rust.

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He put it up on the lift to check whatever you check when you put a car up on a lift.

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He checked the engine and fluids and belts.

He even test drove it.

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We were pretty sure it would get his seal of approval until we pulled back into his garage …

And the dreaded check engine light came on.

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Hooking it up to his handy code reader…. it said error POO18.

Poo is rarely good, but no one wants to spend thousands of dollars on an engine full of it.

P0018 is the OBD-II generic code indicating that the camshaft position sensor A for bank 2 does not correlate to the signal from the crankshaft position sensor.

The bank 2 intake camshaft is out of position compared to the crankshaft position. The bank 2 camshaft phaser is stuck in one position or will not move.

So, poo!

Back to the dealership she went along with my hopes and dreams of ending the month and half long car search we’ve been on for a 19 year old’s first car.

In my day unscrupulous car dealers used to roll back the odometer. These days that’s too difficult, so they just switch off the check engine light instead.

Grrr.

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27 thoughts on “The nightmare continues.”

      1. Hyundai’s 100,000 mile warranty should cover that, and if it’s like their sister company, Kia, the warranty is transferable from one owner. But, with the dealer as a middleman, perhaps not. We gave our daughter our 2008 Kia Sportage (the Kia version of the Santa Fe), and she had a water pump repaired under warranty around 75,000 miles.

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  2. I sure hope you handed back the keys with a smile and walked away. Honest used car salesman are just as rare as a purple, pink tufted unicorn. Except maybe there really is a purple, pink tufted unicorn somewhere.

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    1. What we did was this, returned it and told them there was an engine light warning. We did not tell them we knew what it was. They tried to tell us it was probably just a tire pressure issue, but they’d have their mechanic check it, fix the problem and call us. I’m not holding my breath for that. They’ll just switch it off and sell it to someone else.

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    1. The last four vehicles I’ve bought for myself were new…. and I drive them till they die. The husband, who’s always on the road, buys used every two or three years. But he’s nowhere near as picky!

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  5. I’m thinking of Penny from TBBT whose check engine light was always on. It was such a subtly funny, but oh so believable, conceit on the show. I’m sorry your almost car is now a lost dream.

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  8. Moderately unrelated note: We recently rented a 2019 Santa Fe for our road trip to… Sante Fe. And we both loved it. (Of course, nary a light did blink that shouldn’t have.) My current RAV4 is nearly 15 years old and still going strong, so it may be a while before replacement, but I’ll be keeping my eye on those Santa Fes….

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    1. Ironically we rented a 2019 Santa Fe when we were in Arizona last January. It was a nice ride. My current Subaru Forester is 7 years old and I love her. ( It’s actually a ‘14 but I bought her Oct. of ‘13. Happy birthday Ethel. Yes, my car is named Ethel. )

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  9. And that’s why I’ve been leasing my vehicles for quite awhile now. After the third year, things start to go. Although I did consider buying my last SUV – until I got rear-ended at a stop light and decided I didn’t want it any more ’cause it just didn’t seem to drive the same. Hopefully, I’ll be able to buy the vehicle I’m leasing now – if someone rear-ends or side-swipes me, I won’t have to worry about a vehicle at all because I’ll likely be in jail for murder.

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      1. Yep. I’ve been rear-ended twice (once in a 3-week-old car) and side-swiped twice. In all cases, I was either standing perfectly still at a stoplight or driving peacefully down the street. I think my cars all come with a target.

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      3. Actually, one was a T-bone, not sidewipe – and it was while I was driving my husband’s fairly new vehicle, the first new vehicle he ever had. He was out of town for several months training for a job, and would call asking if I was taking care of his car. I told him, “Well, I’m not driving it a lot right now …” (it was actually in the shop with the engine out). When he came back, I finally told him about the accident.

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  11. Most modern cars would actually be drivable if they got rid of all the computer crap that’s in them. But it’s all part of the planned obsolescence that forces people to buy new cars every few years. My first used car started out as a lemon, but once the stuff was fixed, I drove it for 17 years. You never know…

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