Bought this [2003 Tiburon] lemon brand new. At 4000 miles the clutch
assembly went out. They replaced it at no charge. At 15000 miles it
went again. It cost me $1952.00 because the warranty didn't cover
[it]. Says [a lot] for their 100,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty.
The clutch is a "wear item", because it has to be rebuilt/replaced
periodically. Wear items are not covered under warranty. Also, in the
USA, the bumper-to-bumper warranty for the 2003 models was 5/60, not
10/100. The *powertrain* was 10/100. You've probably also noticed that
dealership managers store many excuses up their arses and are quite fond
of pulling them out and saying, "This isn't covered by the warranty!"
You didn't say whether this car had an I4 or V6 engine. Quite a few
people complained about clutch problems with the 2003 V6 Tiburons on
this newsfroup and places like
http://newtiburon.com/ . This was
apparently due to Hyundai using the same clutch on the I4 and V6
Tiburons. 4000 miles seems like way too short a time, though. The
people who complained about clutch problems said that they needed to get
the clutch rebuilt at ~15,000 miles, not 4000. The remedy suggested by
a number of people on newtiburon.com was "install an aftermarket racing
clutch". That seems to have worked for the people who tried it, at
least.
I believe they fixed this in the 2004 models. ICBW, so any 2004-2005
Tiburon V6 manual-tranny owners out there, say something.