[Mainia1]

It's not an issue that I have found. First off some of this happened to YouTube testers that were beating a new car with a new clutch. A new clutch doesn't have a high contact patch to bleed heat to the pressure plate and flywheel. And by all means this does not mean "baby" your clutch when it's new. Babying new brakes, clutch and engine do not mean a better longevity. Brakes need to be bedded and need a transfer of brake pad material to the rotors and babying them will not let this happen. Some form of this transfer has to logically happen and is beneficial to the clutch system too. Piston rings need to to be seated though heavy cylinder pressure early on. Gone are the days of "babying' is how you break break-in your car. We can see this as Hyundai considers the Kona's engine "broke -in" at 600 miles.

I tow a small boat with my Kona and am well under the max towing spec (2,800 lbs 1.6T AWD) that the whole world can go by, BUT North America (USA and Canadians) can't seem to because the manufactures "towing conspiracy" bullsmit. I have never had any warning and I tow out of town on some weekends in full blown bumper to bumper traffic at 5:00 pm for 30 mins. It's all how you drive the DCT. While in traffic I ALWAYS am in sport mode to engage the AWD in it's 95% front-5% rear mode ( my estimate because there is Toyota documentation on the Rav4 and my wife's Rav4 acts 100% like my Kona with AWD engagement and personality and being almost exactly the same. Too much to go into here as I have posted it else ware on this site) And sport mode disables 7th gear use that should never be used with any heavy towing. A 200lbs garden trailer is ok in 7th gear.

The key in driving the Kona in heavy traffic with high use of the clutch in the DCT is manual mode and using high engine rpm and a large space where people can take a spot in front of you. ( big deal if 3-5 people cut in front of you in a 10 mile traffic stretch) I leave about 10 car lengths while towing so I can keep in 1st gear and I may hit rpms in the 4,000 to 4.500 for a bit. I would have no need to do this in most but not all heavy traffic areas I have been in without towing. I then manually shift into second IF I see mph being up past 4,500 rpm. The key is don't shift unless you have to and keep the clutch disk engaged to the flywheel to dissipate heat. It has worked for me so far.

I also dumped ALL driveline fluids and replaced them with Redline synthetics at 2,000 miles on new car. These oils can take higher heat then stock OEM. I also run a thicker viscosity oil then the "gas mileage FORCED" tree hugger induced, wear increasing CAFE standard oil, the manufacture specs. I use the proper speced Hyundai oil they speced BEFORE their arm was twisted by the " Mob". I did one towing before taking the lower engine trans shield to allow air to get at the transmission while towing. I want to take trans oil temps while towing, and hope to do it this summer. I also change my driveline oil yearly since it is cheap insurance since it is in rough service mode and it cost a me $75 of Redline products to do everything since I do it myself. The big key here is the front diff and DCT gearbox uses the same oil together, so there has to be shear stress with so many shear points, and I don't know where my trans oil temps are yet.


I also heavily sport drive my Kona, sport driving is so very hard on the clutch. No warning or over temp warning ever. I think you are worrying a lot about nothing. Just use your head, and use common sense to skirt around the issue, that is really a none issue.