Ok, here's my situation. I own a 2001 Sonata GLS. It has about 94000 miles on it. I drive it about 60 miles daily. Last week I noticed it was pulling to the right and the passenger side front tire was leaning in at the top. So I thought it needed an alingment. I work long hours and finally had a chance to take the car to NTB yesterday for an alingment. Once they got it on the lift the mechanic had me come and take a look at the car. He said that he believed that the control arm was bent so he told me to take it to a body shop and have them look at it to determine whether or not anything was bent. So, I left NTB and started the 25 minute drive home. For some reason I thought, I need to get off the interstate, so I did. About 10 minutes later, the control arm broke free from the subframe and messed the fender up and pretty much ruined my tire. It was incredibly rusty. I kind of consider myself lucky. Had this happened at 70mph instead of 40 things could have been alot worse. Heres my question, what do I do? I filed a claim with State Farm, but I'm thinking they won't repair the subframe. I read on several sites that people had rust issues with the subframes and Hyundai wouldn't do anything. I bought the car used, so I assume the warranty is no longer valid. Any suggestions?

Your insurance fixing your car shouldn't have anything to do with your warranty, which yes you don't have any coverage at this point. The subframe likely cannot be repaired, but it is only bolted to the car, it is replaceable at any decent repair or body shop.

Do you know what one will cost?

offhand no I don't, but a guess I'd say at least $700 for the part and several hours labor for the job. You could call your local dealer ask ask for a price too.

Oh, I can't wait to buy that. Think I'll fix it and get rid of it.

You might try to report this to the NTSB. I would think that a car with significant rust issues on the sub frame would warrant some type of recall. Perhaps HTSB will require Hyundai to recall all suspect cars for inspection and repair.
This is a true safety issue.

I have a 2000 Sonata V6... subframe just broke and thank god I wasn't on the highway. Wheel at a 30 degree angle to the car, dented the body of my car a little wondering if I should get it fixed.... or switch. How do you go about looking up and reporting?

HI, I thought I'd respond to your post because my subframe rust is similiar but even more striking because we only had 39,000 on it. Thought it was alignment then the mechanic called back and said we need to replace the subframe for 24M bucks. I'm going to try going through Hyundai to get reimbursed.[FONT=Arial][SIZE=7][COLOR=blue]

I have a '99 sonata gls. The person who had the car before me bent the control arm, but I was driving one day, and my whole steering wheel dropped. About an hour after that, I let someone else take the car out to see what was wrong with it... and my subframe had rotted through, and snapped my half-shaft and i was no longer able to drive it. I got the part used, and it took about a month at the local tech school to get everything all figured out, and in the end i payed about 100 bucks for labor. The repair shop that had put my tires on, failed to notice that anything was wrong with my car, and they quoted me over 1400 to fix my car.

hope you find the part...

My post shd have read 2,000bucks for repair. Reported to Hyundai consumer dept. and they are proceeding with it. I hope they go as far as writing a check.

Here is a site you can look at for recalls and defects to include tires and child restraint recalls. I have been getting alerts from http://www.mycarstats.com with updates on my style sonata and there are a few complaints with major rust. No your car shouldnt fall apart but if you dont get your vehicle washed alot and live in an area where they use road salt then I would say its almost expected at least for my vehicle at 9 years.

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/

Steve

This post has been edited by ssonata78: Mar 19 2008, 04:02 PM

Hello all,

Same problems with the 99 sonata overhere in Holland.
Last friday i noticed that the car was pulling to the right , i thought well this a probarly a tyre pressure problem and filled up the tyre,
My wife went shopping with the car and told me it was stilling pulling to the right.
So i rang the garage ( were i bought the car ) and asked them if i could come over and that was ok,
So i drove over there and when i was almost there taking a corner (15 mph) and the complete wheel and suspension broke of the subframe and also the shaft was pulled out of the gearbox.
I rang the garage and they were with me in 3 minutes and the mechanic looked at the car and told me he had never seen something like that.
The owener of the garage (hyundai dealer) showed uo and garanteed me that all would be repaired (just bought the car 5 months ago) also he gave me a replacemend car.
I went to the garage next day to make sure all costs would be covered and he asured me again that it would be repaired and fixed for 100% without costing me a euro.
So as you see there are dealers who are solving Hyundais problems.