So in reading the comments on InsideLine.com, re: 2011 Sonata Turbo, this guy's post about heatsoak grabbed my attention.

The test driver for IL noticed "fairly significant heatsoak".

I love reading and participating in comments on IL; if only they'd update it to a forum so it would work better.

For all I know he's one of you on here.

"allthingshonda says:
06:44 AM, 10/13/10
Heat soak is a concern buyers should consider because this could lead to long term durability problems. Also if it has problems dissapating heat while the engine and cooling system is running what happens when the engine is shut off and the turbo is still spinning? Does Hyundai recommend the old school method of letting the engine idle a few minutes before shut down? Heat is a problem for all turbo gas engines but proper engineering eliminates this problem. Does the Sonata have an intercooler and an upgraded cooling system compared to the base engine. Ford designed a reverse flow cooling system to continue to cool the turbos when the engine was shut down. They also included a heavy duty cooling system and an intercooler.
The old saying of you get what you pay for may unfortunately be true for this Hyundai. Gotta feeling the base engine is going to be the one that easily does the 100,000+ trouble free mile test."


That got me thinking about it. I never really thought of heatsoak as necessarily a bad thing.

My Acura doesn't seem to suffer from it, but the 03 Yukon in my family I drive occasionally, now that thing will get bogged down with it and slow down considerably, the cooling fans will come on all heavy and everything.

So what do you think about this heatsoak with the new Sonata? Durability issue? I just thought of it as being hot, not a problem "dissipating heat".

 

Hyundai engines love to run hot...it's just their way. My '04 Santa Fe ran hotter than any other car I've ever seen and it never had any engine-related problems other than the fact I needed to top off the coolant once a month. People would come over and the car would have been sitting for (no joke) eight hours and they'd ask me when I got home. It'd be 9 PM and I'd tell them I went to get lunch.

 

Turbochargers coking their bearings due to excessive heat on shut-down is a thing of the past. Seriously, think like 1988 when guys were still putting turbo timers into their modded Supras to oil-cool the turbo after turning it off.

I personally wouldn't worry about the armchair engineering from "allthingshonda"; Hyundai undoubtedly spent millions in R&D on that turbo engine to make sure its not going to destroy itself from elevated turbo heat levels.

Besides, how does one define "fairly significant heatsoak" anyway? Does that mean performance is down on 100 degree days? Does it just feel hot under the hood? I have no idea what that guy is talking about.

 

I wasn't idolizing this guy, it was just his post that got me thinking about the whole heatsoak issue.

And while I agree with you about how technology has definitely advanced, I still don't think a FI motor would last as long as a NA one. Long enough for 99.9% of buyers, but I'm willing to bet the FI would quit first.

 

Subaru had this problem on the 1998 - 2004 Legacy and other cars with the EJ20 engine and the twin scroll turbo and Top Mount Intercooler (TMIC).

The issue was not enough air getting through the TMIC, so the engine would just not spool up like a cooled down turbo would. The US didn't see these turbos, as far as I know.

With a modern engine, I would have hoped Hyundai would have used a large enough FMIC so they would not have this issue. Just a thought.

 

does the Sonata even have an intercooler?

 

 

oh well it would help solve this problem then. I'd rock an Optima with some hood vents