Hyundai Reviews

The first thing to check here is what’s called the clock spring. This is an electrical connector inside the steering wheel that allows the wheel to be turned to full lock and back while still allowing for electrical contact between the airbag and the rest of the car.

If this spring fails, the connection between the airbag and the systems that would trigger it in a crash are lost. Which means that in a big enough collision, the airbag would not fire and protect the driver.

Clock spring replacement is relatively simple but it’s still a job best left to the pros, as any time you’re messing with an airbag, you’re playing with a fairly violent explosive component. Get it wrong and accidentally fire the airbag, and you could be seriously injured.

It really doesn’t matter how fast you’re driving when a timing chain or timing belt breaks. If the engine is an interference design, then this failure has possibly turned the rest of the engine to junk. That’s because the valves and pistons have tried to occupy the same space at the same time, and widespread internal damage is the usually outcome.

From what I can gather, the V6 engine in your car is indeed an interference design, so the damage is possibly terminal. You could remove the cylinder head(s) to check, but if the engine has locked up, there’s a fair chance you’ll need to either rebuild the engine or replace it with a different one. You may also find that the cost of these repairs will be greater than the market value of the vehicle itself. At that point, you need to decide whether to repair it or start again with a new vehicle.

It sounds like the transmission has broken something internally. It could be that the clutch assembly is smashed, or the input or output shafts have snapped. It could even be the actual gearsets that have failed, leaving you with no mechanical connection between the engine and the gearbox.

Either way, it sounds like it needs a new clutch and/or gearbox which may be more than the market value of the car. That said, wrecking yards are full of Hyundai Getzes, so a second-hand, tested transmission might save the day.