Hi, In April I bought A 2004 Diesel Kia Sedona from a man who said it was uesd as part of his taxi firm. He showed me a very up to date log book, which showed it had been serviced and MOT'ed every six months. It had 85000 approx on the clock, and looked like the ideal car for my family. He said he traded on a small scale and was happy to take my car as part exchange. (I bought the Kia for £3995 and he took my car for £2000).

We had had the car for less than a month when on a family day out we noticed smoke coming from the engine, the thermostat said all was fine. We found water coming out of a pipe, under the car at the rear. The pipes were corroded and after looking on the internet we found out they were part of the heating system. I booked the car into our local KIA garage for them to be replaced. As far as we were concerned, rusty pipes on a car of this age is part and parcel of buying a second hand car.

After much investigation the Kia garage forund that the thermosat was missing altogether, the cam belt cover had been cut away to enable repacement without dropping the engine out, the head of the engine needed replacing and althought the rockers were complete inside the engine, there were large shards of metal found that appeared to be remnants of old rockers. The lack of thermostat has also ment we had blown the head gasket.

We tried to recover the costs from the man we purchased the car from but to no avail, and we were advised small claims could be more expensive than we could claim back.

It cost £2995 to have Kia fix the car. In July the car failed again. The Kia garage informed us that the head gasket had blown again, and so had some of the rockers, under further investigation they said when they drained the sump there was more shards of metal than they first realised. They advised us the best thing to do would be to replace the engine. They got us a second hamd engine for £1100 with 75000 on the clock. They fitted all the new parts they had from the old engine and charged us a lower price on labour. All was good until the end of october when the car broke down again! Back to the Kia garage to be told the head gasket had blown again. They said they would fix it under warranty but then the warranty eneded.

Less than a month later, with the cold weather looming , we wanted to check on water, oil etc only to find the water had more oil in it than water. On contacting the garage again they said we were very unlucky, they would look at the car again but the engine was no longer under warranty from the place they had bought it from.

I feel at a complete loss. I could have bought a brand new car for the amount of money we have now spent. PLEASE could you advise me what I should do next?!