Thursday, 20 July 2023

Blutos after the third week.

Following on from my previous summaries of the experience of driving my new Seltos for the first couple of weeks, I thought I would add a few things I've experienced in the third week. As a reminder my car is :- Kia Seltos PE GT-Line AWD 2023, 1.6 l turbo, 8 speed automatic, Neptune Blue.




This week I got the Seltos very dirty. I was wanting to try out the Centre Diff Lock button and see what it did. I found a gravel road out the back of Caloundra and went for a little drive, the gravel turned into a dirt track with potholes so I clicked the Centre diff lock button and continued. The potholes were pretty full of water from recent rain and then it started to get muddy. It was at this stage that I decided that a modicum of discretion was in order so rather than playing around in the mud as there was no one about and I wasn't carrying any sort of recovery equipment, I did a quick multi-point turn trying to stay on the track as much as possible so as not to encounter any unseen muddy areas and headed back to civilization. At no stage was I really experiencing any problems with the Seltos, it was handling it quite well, the extra bit of clearance being nice and the tyres and drive system were gripping quite well. I've had a lot of experience driving a 4WD as my other car is a "Proper" 4WD which I use for camping, beach driving and outback touring but I wasn't prepared to risk the new car. I need to find a nice dry track with moderately testing wombat holes to see how the Centre diff lock goes managing different tyres lifting off the ground and reducing traction and forward progress. 


Fuel Economy - Once again no surprises this weeks fuel economy is coming in at 7.7 l/100 Km for close to 500 Km with still more than 100 Km showing on the fuel gauge. This brings the car up to about 1500 Km and half way to the 3000 Km first service and checkup. So I've booked it in for a few weeks time since there is a bit of lag in ringing up and getting booked in. 


After leaving the car in the sun for about three hours on hotish SEQ winter day I returned to a very warm car. I used the seat cooler for the first time and it was great. Used on low for about 15 min until the car cooled down then didn't need it anymore. This will be great on the hot summer days. 


I played around with the Auto hand brake function and it seemed to work quite well. As soon as you start to accelerate it takes the hand brake off and puts it on once you are stopped again. The light shows green when it is braking and white/grey when not braking. I did notice that it doesn't feel quite right when parking as I was expecting it to creep a little bit as you take your foot off the brake. Not sure I'll use this feature but it does seem to work as advertised. 


Played with the sunroof and worked out how to fully open it as well as just tilt it. Nice on a sunny winter day if the sun isn't shining directly in. After tilting it I thought that it didn't close properly but it did. 


All up I'm still really enjoying driving the car and still liking how quiet and smooth it is.


Bye Jeff.
Sent from my iPad

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