Other engine problem on the 2013 Kia Sorento
5 crashes 23 fires 3 injuries 31 of the 311 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When other engine problem gets reported
Owners of the 2013 Kia Sorento report other engine problem at a median of 80,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 40,000 miles and a quarter after 119,000 miles, from 242 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 11,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 140,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 128,181 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
22% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11,419 miles | 40,409 miles | 80,000 miles | 118,750 miles | 139,600 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 5 a crash, 23 a fire and 3 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $300–$4,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 21 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2023, at a median of 1,600 miles, and latest on the 2014 at 101,000 miles.
By volume the 2016 carries the most reports, with 340; the 2013 has 311. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
I test drove the vehicle which had only 5 miles on it and had not been test driven prior to me. I noticed a very slight vibration from 0mpg to 10mpg, and asked the sales associate if that was normal. He said it was fine and was nothing to be concerned about. I did not notice any further issues while idling at stop lights and did not notice the vibration again during the test drive. After I signed the financial papers at 11pm after the dealership had officially closed for the day and got into the car to drive home, I was sitting in the car while it idled and I was speaking to the sales associate when the car began to shake and the vibration was very noticeable. I immediately told the associate and he said to bring the car in to the service department the following day to have it inspected and said it was nothing to worry about. He said it's under warranty so it would be taken care of one way or another. We brought the car in the next day and the service man told my husband it was likely just that it needed to break-in since it only had a few miles on it. They ran tests on the car and everything checked out fine. The man suggested…
Driving on the freeway in slow traffic. Suddenly the engine died with no warning. I had to stop in the middle of the freeway to attempt to restart the car. It did not immediately start, but after a few moments the engine kicked over. I drove it off the freeway and had it towed the next day to the dealer. After having the car for a week the dealer says that they "can't duplicate the problem" so they won't fix it. They say there is no "code" for the problem. This is not a safe car to drive if the engine dies on the freeway. If kia can't determine the problem they need to recall this car. *tr
While on vacation (june 15) we were to stop by the dealer and get our new tags. On i77 at mileage marker 33 in very heavy traffic, the engine quit running. I immediately turned on the emergency flashers. We were in the middle lane and wasn't able to get over to the right (nobody would let us get out of the lane we were in) to get to a safe place .we almost caused multiple accidents. My wife was screaming. I thought that we were going to create a major accident. No matter what I did I was not able to get the car started and it came to a complete stop. People were going around us on both sides beeping their horns and other gestures. After fooling with the gear shifter, I put the vehicle in park it started but when I put it in drive it started to miss and was in the process of stalling when I put it in neutral the engine started to run fine. I then put it in low gear and it started to move forward, once I got some speed (did not look at the speedometer to see how fast I was going) I put it in drive and everything was fine after that. Also, the vehicle runs rough when in neutral and while idling when in gear (varies with no rhyme or…
Also reported on the 2013 Kia Sorento
Other body or interior problem
Other brake problem
Other electrical problem
Headlight failure or clouding
Complete engine failure or seizure
Other powertrain problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 311 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other engine problem happen on the 2013 Kia Sorento?
Across 242 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 80,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 40,000 miles and a quarter after 119,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other engine problem on the 2013 Kia Sorento?
311 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 2.5 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed