Hi!

My father bought a new Sante Fe years back... a 2003 model w/ the V6 AWD. The car has 27K miles on it now. I recently rather inherited the vehicle and noted that the gas mileage is quite poor.

In "normal acceleration" on rather flat road the car will shift from 1st to 2nd around 10-18 MPH reaching 2000-2700 RPMS, 2nd to 3rd around at 30-34 MPH again in the same RPM range and into 4th gear around 40 MPH again within the general 2000-3000 RPM range.

After 40 MPH however there is no more shifting, it is a 4 Speed Automatic tranny. Now when going 55 MPH again on essentially flat road it is spinning 3500-3700 RPMS which seems very high. Gas mileage goes down the tubes.

I asked a mechanic I bowl with (another team) about this and they told me that it sounds like its not going into "overdrive" at all.

Since I am rather dense about such matters I figured I would do a web search and found this forum.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions towards this end? According to my sister who took this car to Florida from NY years ago w/ my parents the mileage was extremely poor so it has been like this for some time.

According the the mechanic I spoke to he said its probably been the case since day 1.

Since I am "new" to this vehicle I do not even know if it has "Overdrive".

I had a Chevy Blazer which at 55 MPH would turn about 1400-1600 RPMS and the mileage was leaps and bounds ahead of this particular Sante Fe. Best I can figure on the Highway (55-65 MPH) with the V6 in the Sante Fe its getting about 8 MPG! Mileage in city driving is about double that assuming the car stays in the 35-40 MPH range as again... Once it slips into 4th gear anything faster than this has RPMS go up significantly. Thus for example driving it at 45 MPH in city driving will see mileage go down significantly.

I have not spoken to a Hyundai dealer yet about this as I am not even certain if the Torque Converter/Overdrive would be covered by the 10 year 100K warranty. Again, the mechanic I briefly spoke to at bowling told me: "It sounds to me like the Torque Converter is not hooking up into overdrive". I dont know what that means

IN trying to find some web searches on the topic found nuthin' except that the mileage should be around 17-18 city (which it is as long as we stay around 0-40 MPH) and 27 highway (which we are at 8-9 MPG at 55-65 MPH).

Thus doing the math... if we are supposed to get around 25 MPG Highway and we're spinning 3300-3500 RPM at 55 MPH and getting around 8 MPG... if we take that 25 MPG divided by 8 MPG we get "3" now if we take that 3500 RPM's and divide that by "3" we get 1100 some-odd RPM's which would given "other vehicles such as my Blazer" make sense. Yes?

Mechanic told me it should spin 1200-2000 worst case at around 55 MPH on flat road.

Anyone? Advice?

If someone has a Sante Fe 2003 (or thereabouts) could you let me know at 55 or 65 MPH on flat road what sorta RPM's the tachometer is showing?

 

Overdrive is just any gear with a ratio below 1. In your case, overdrive is just 4th gear. About the only thing I can think of is that the torque converter is not locking in 4th gear like it should. So I would suggest getting it looked at.

As the second owner, you are covered under the 10-year/100K miles warranty. The second owner only gets a 5-year/60k mile warranty. And that would have been over 2 years ago.