Well like a lot of people who move back and forth between different countries we brought our family car with us to Germany. It is a Kia Sedona and since Kia is a global brand we thought hey no problem on the maintenance side. Were we ever wrong. Kia like all good multinationals markets their products according to local market demands. What this means is that the Kia you know and love may have a different name, brand, look, wheels, engine, etc...
This was the case for our Sedona. The other day as we drove home the alternator finally died and with it went all the wonderful electronic devices in said Sedona. You might be interested to know that includes the engine as well... Yes, our modern vehicles are nothing so much as computers with wheels. So as we sat on the side of the road considering life's meaning and other deep concepts. You see it takes time to get a tow on a weekend when the entire world is watching Soccer. Yes it is World Cup fever but I will save that for another post.
Anyway, as I have come to find out the parts stores here do not stock alternators for Kia Sedonas. They have parts for other Kia models but not for Sedonas. Well I called several outlets in the US about getting the part and wrongly assumed I could just ask for the part number. Wow, was I wrong!
I had one guy tell me sure you can have the part number as soon as you buy the part and fork out $500. Oh and by the way you won't see that part for at least 3 weeks! And please by the way if you don't mind tack on another $100 for shipping!
Thus began the quest to find a local version of the mythical Sedona alternator. Yes and quest is the right word to use in this case. It turns out that Kia produced the Sedona van in many markets under different names. Our car here in Europe was called the Carnival. Armed with this information I thought great I just get that part for that model and we are home free. Again I was misinformed. Kia decided to put a completely different engine(A 2.9L turbo diesel engine ) in the European model. So now the alternator for that model will not work in our Sedona.
Ho Hum what to do next. Thanks to the kind editors at Wikipedia I did more reading. Really fascinating and scintillating history. Industrial manufacturing history..yeah! Yes, I know you will be excited to know that Kia acquired the Hyundai Corporation in the early 2000s! I am sure a triumph of negotiations and Board room power games. What this means for us was that Kia hit on the idea of using Hyundai products in its Kia car line. And thus it is so that the Kia Sedona has a Hyundai engine.
Now I knew I had found the clue to the mythical alternator. I needed to find a model car sold in Europe with the same engine. And yes there was the Hyundai ix55. Don't you just love that name.
Of course to further muddy the waters, the marketing types at Kia also decided to release it with another name, what for it...VeraCruz! Whoo yeah just think cool Carribean breezes and panama hats sitting on the beach eating fish tacos and watching the sunset. Breezes and tacos aside I was thrilled to have a local make to take to the parts gods here in country.
I quickly typed in my hard won discovery into my trusty decoder ring (aka. insert your favorite search engine here) and discovered that the part number that Kia assigned to the alternator for a Vera Cruz was 37300-3C120. Eureka!! This must be what the guy felt like at Sutter's Creek as he pulled out that first gold nugget of the American River. I had discovered the part number for a locally available alternator.
But wait I realized that the official Kia Sedona part number was 37300-3C170 not 37300-3C120. Arggh..so close but need confirmation. The part needs to provide 12V and 130 amps of juice to make all the electronics work to include the engine. I called an alternator specialist in New Jersey and confirmed that the case and power requirements of the 120 are identical to the 170. I further discovered that Kia marketed another vehicle called the Sorento with a the same engine (2007 model) but which used the same alternator, 37300-3C120.
Now fully armed I did purchase from a dealer in Berlin which can have it here in 2 days!
More to follow!
