Hyundai Genesis Tear-Down! Sorta…

Having put our Hyundai Genesis test car through just about everything we could think of, we decided it was time to take it apart. At least, just a little bit apart. Every year, new cars are inclined more and more toward locking the shade-tree mechanic out, with fewer service and maintenance ops that can be performed by someone other than the dealership. So my goal was merely to pop the hood, check where everything was, and get the car far enough apart to determine if it could be worked with. At all. More…

Open the hood, and the first thing you see is this huge plastic turtle-shell whose function seems to be nothing more than ornamental. I guess for "consumers," it’s important to cover the engine so you don’t have to look at it—they’re such unsightly and inconvenient things, engines. Fortunately, the big shell is held on only by a bunch of plastic nipples, so it pops right off—and although one of the nipples’ inserts tried to fall out in the process, it was an easy fix. Once off, the motor beneath kind of reminded me of Darth Vader without his helmet.

Next—and this is important—how many of the fluids and maintenance parts can you access? Brake reservoir, power steering pump, oil, and coolant were all right there. The only thing I couldn’t find a way to check was the tranny fluid—and like a lot of other new cars, that might be something that’s no longer accessible to the user. However, I liked that the oil filter was right up on top of the engine, and rather than being a conventional spin-on metal filter, there was a housing whose top you remove with a wrench (a plastic nut, though—that’s always a little sketch in the long run), with a replaceable filter element inside (similar to, I believe, certain Mercedes and Volvo models). Easy peasy, though keep in mind that you have to remove the turtle-shell each time you change the filter. Other stuff, like the fuse panels and air filter, were under conventional clipped-on plastic covers and were similarly easy to get at. The serpentine belt was in a tight spot, but that’s pretty much to be expected.

One note: the engine oil was cloudy, and there were some very suspicious-looking oily globules in the coolant, which would generally indicate a blown head gasket. But Hyundai said it was just some congealed Water-Wetter, which they poured in to help keep things cool during a rigorous track day that the Genesis endured right before it came to us.

The burly-looking but not over-complicated spark plug connectors came off with an 8mm bolt, and down in the hole was a regular-looking plug—nothing out of the ordinary there, and it threaded right out, just like on an old car.

Next up was to jack it and take a wheel off. I rarely trust the flimsy scissors jacks that cars come with, but getting my burly floor-jack under it was a bit of struggle—this car sits really low! I finally just lifted it from under the rocker-panel seam (I know: bad!), though I was definitely yearning for my cheater bar when it came time to bust the lugs loose—I had to get John to jump up and down on the puny lug wrench that came with the car, because I just couldn’t hack it. But once that big aluminum wheel was off, everything pertaining to the brakes and front-end looked surprisingly user-friendly. There wasn’t much in the way of plastic shrouds or other superfluous flotsam—it was a pretty clean setup overall, and those wheel arches were huge, allowing plenty of room for wrenching on stuff.

The verdict: you’ll find this car isn’t unfriendly toward having basic maintenance jobs preformed on it. And if you wanted to take it further apart for some serious mods, you probably wouldn’t meet a lot of resistance there, either. Much more accessible and intuitive than I would have predicted for a modern luxury car.