I’ll assume it’s a Hyundai dealership that wants to charge you to assess the car. And I hear what you’re saying about the car’s service history and the fact that some of these engines have been fixed by Hyundai because they were faulty from new. So, the best advice is to forget about the dealership and go straight to Hyundai’s customer service department at head office.

That cuts out the middle man at the dealership and should get you in touch with somebody who knows whether your car was one of the affected ones or whether you’ve just been unlucky in this instance. My experience has been that Hyundai takes this stuff very seriously and has helped other owners in the past. However, your case will still be assessed according to the service history and how many kilometres the car has covered.

The ABS warning is for a problem with the anti-lock braking system (that's what it stands for) and the image of a serving car is to warn you that there’s also potentially a problem with the car’s stability control. So, no, it’s not the transmission at fault here.

Both the ABS and stability control are crucial safety systems and the car really shouldn’t be driven until these problems have been checked out and rectified. The first thing to do is take the car to a workshop and have it electronically scanned. The onboard computer will have logged the faults as they were detected and will be able to identify the problem areas to give the mechanic a head-start on working out what’s wrong.

You’re in luck here, Tony, because both the petrol and diesel engines fitted to this generation of the i30 used timing chains rather than rubber toothed timing belts. As such, the chain should be good for the life of the engine, rather than requiring scheduled replacement like a timing belt.

For the record, most manufacturers say a rubber timing-belt should be changed (roughly) at 100,000km or 10-year intervals. That said, some carmakers recommend much shorter intervals, so it’s worth knowing this stuff. A failed timing belt will often destroy the rest of the engine, but so can a timing chain if it fails. It’s just that a chain is much less likely to fail in service.