2020 Kona Towing Capacity
The last year Hyundai posted in their manual a small car that they "said " was advisable that could tow was 2013, it was in my Elantra GT 1.8 liter 1,250 tow capacity. In 2014 when the Elantra GT high hp 2.0 liter came out "not recommended". I had a small boat with the Elantra under that weight and it tow locally ok and I was not worried about transmission issues . Distance towing is another matter to consider.
This "not recommended" does not mean "NO", it means as a manufacture we "discourage" it. It could be said this "not recommended" is a North American automotive conspiracy, when CLEARLY Europe and other countries have the same exact car towing trailers just fine, and the weight specs are in their manuals. And with the advent of "World Cars" by these manufactures, they can't say they a different cars like they could 20 years ago, they are the exact same cars, with only micro tweaks like suspension tuning for different geographic location.
Just to preface so you know where I am coming from to the ton new people here, I owned a hobby Audi repair shop and also now work as a maintenance guy at a mid sized print shop and work with oil analysis and work with high end synthetic industrial oils. I even went up against the worlds largest rotary screw air compressor company to prove to them their OEM oil is sub par at best and varnishes up their own compressors with testing and working with oil engineers and R&D oil engineers to prove my case. One of those is a retire Allison automatic transmission engineer who is known as the godfather of the Allison trans, who I have picked is brain on many occasions since he is an oil engineer and an automatic transmission engineer too. So while I am not an expert or even close, I have some knowledge in this area.
My personal opinion is some of the reasoning is because by using that verbiage they will discourage a high percentage of users to not tow and have a small decrease in warranty issue that are inevitable, be it from over loading, incorrect use of an untrained driver towing with an overdrive transmission, lack of proper maintenance from the owner when using the car in a "rough service" scenario, and of course law suits they would get dragged into.
All my vehicles get Redline high performance oils, they did at 2,000 miles of life. Let me digress for a moment here. I will bring it up again here to some of you that have AWD as I have a full write up a couple of times here on this site. Change out your oil in your rear differential at 5,000 miles to get rid of all the (large amount) AWD clutch pack break-in material that is there early on, in a minuscule of rear diff oil of about a hair over a 1/2 quart/1/2 liter of oil. We are talking high abrasiveness beating up your rear diff bearings. Then change it every 30,000 miles after. This is with all brand named manufactures with AWD clutch packs in the rear IE Toyota, Audi , Subaru ect.... And NO, don't believe the Hyundai service manager or order writers that are 110% clueless on this matter. Find my posts on this subject.
The big thing in towing with a small car is you have to use manual mode, or sport mode if you have a DCT or regular auto trans ATF using trans as NOT to use the overdrive gearing that will fail early from towing use. I only have some knowledge with Hyundai's DCT trans and not with the Kona's 2.0 liter trans car, but I did tow with the Elantra GT ATF pumping trans which is close to the 2.0 trans I would guess.
I always run Redline trans oil since it can take far more heat before breaking down then the OEM trans oil, so right there you are far a head on adding longevity to the transmission being a manual, DCT which is a computer controlled manual trans that is acting like a auto trans and the regular ATF pumping, torque convertor conventional automatic transmission most of you know of.
Brakes are the big issue here too, The AWD Kona 1.6T brakes are big so it handles towing well with trailers with no brakes that almost 100% of us will be doing because of North American trailering norms. If you tow, keep brakes at 100% non rusting in the brakes swept area. The rear side of the brake rotor ALWAYS rusts out first and more aggressively. If you tow, it is up to you to have brakes at 100% with anything above a tiny little micro utility trailer. In the rust belt, that means checking the back side of your brake rotors twice a season after year 2 of your new car. They can go that fast here in the winter salt belt. Not taking your brakes health rating seriously is very stupid and will endanger you and some else's family. After market "slotted" rotors help too, skip the drilled rotors since they can heat cycle crack. Cryo frozen rotors last a lot longer in salty conditions, so that would be another option too.
I will use the example of my Kona AWD 1.6T DCT which can not by any means correlate to the Kona 2.0 non turbo. I will also use my wife's 2014 Toyota Rav4 AWD that has a AFT pumper trans and the same AWD rear diff setup as the Kona, that is closer to what I think you would have to do with the 2.0 liter Hyundai non turbo car in towing use. I tow in sport mode in the Kona all the time. Sport mode doesn't let you go into 7th gear. 7th gear in my opinion is off limits for any kind of towing. You can feel that the "load" is easier on the trans when using AWD in sport mode since it is my opinion that the Kona AWD DCT is just like the Rav4 that when that is in sport mode has 95% front to 5% rear power output. There is some form of this in the Kona's sport mode, at what percentage is not known. The Rav4 has a documented percentage. If I am going up a hill or long grade of any size I go into manual mode and go into 5th gear. I stay between 2,750 to 3,750 rpm while on the hwy. You do not want to lug and extended high rpm under or at 4,000 wont hurt your motor.
The Rav4 while towing 1,2,00 lbs micro tent camper we use in manual mode and set it for 4th gear max. So in the Rav4 manual mode it runs the same up to 4th gear where it stays as a max gear. We use 4th gear up to 70 mph and hit 5th on flat cool 75 mph max speed we go. 6th/OD gear is never used. On any hill or long grade up we downshift to 4th. the engine is at 3,750-3,800 rpm in 4th at 70mph. SO we are in 4th on hot summer days 70% of the time and when cooler below 70 deg we can get by with more 5th because of the added power it just pulls better. And of course I only tow with premium with both cars. Even though the Kona get 93 octane 90% of the time since my LSPI event. I disagree with Hyundai on 87 octane on ANY turbo in any form of rough service of sport driving. . 89 octane should the minimum. But that just me on late model Hyundai turbo motors with 10:1 compression getting full boost at 17lbs at 1,375 rpm. That why they stumble and cough because they DETUNED it SO MUCH for 87 octane on full boost. You don't see that on German cars , you pay to play and they mandate 91 octane minimum.
If you use a small utility trailer that doesn't exceed 500-700 lbs in loaded running weight nothing needs to be done, just tow it. If your pushing 1000lbs +, you need to concern yourself with adding cooling/and maybe better trans oil, unless you a way to monitor your temp numbers. I still need to get a temp on my DCT oil when towing to see where I am at. Adding a DCT cooler would involve adding an oil pump to the cooler pathway.
Then a smart move (if needed) would be to add a transmission cooler to aid in fluid cooling which is very easy to do with a ATF conventional trans and install it to it with it coming from the transmission to the radiator cooler and then exiting from the radiator cooler then you install the external cooler there in the flow path. Then it exits from the external cooler back into the transmission to dump into the trans oil pan to start the cycle again. Pulling the trans lines to the radiator and seeing which shoots oil out is the way to find out your flow path, again the external cooler goes after the radiator cooler. I did this with my wife's Rav4 since that car towed our boat and now tows a micro light tent trailer. That car has Redline D6 ATF in it, as Toyota WS is a horrible ATF fluid as a semi-synthetic and can't take ANY rough service without an external added cooler like all the Toyota trucks have on it. In my opinion Hyundai's latest AFT fluid is far superior to WS, so that is comforting to see. And Hyundai uses a radiator to cool it where the Rav4 up to model year 2018 has a hockey puck sized oil heater that can't cool the trans fluid with such a small micro cooler and short time for the fluid to interface with it. Sorry. I digress.
If you tow, you need to go by the 'rough service " guide on oil change in the manual or LESS in some cases. Since I tow and sport drive my car I use high end synthetic oils like Redline and I would also us Amsoil in the driveline exclusively. Both have a fantastic track records on and off the track and for long haul vehicles. I use the recommended oils in the rear diff but have changed the DCT trans that has the front differential in it to a more robust viscosity that Hyundai used and approved BEFORE the big push for thin fuel economy viscosity oils. That being going from a 70w-75 Gl-4 rated oil that by the way Redline has and most all others don't. So you guys and gals want a better oil the Hyundai's cheap semi-synthetic oil that makes them money and gets them past warranty , you have an option for a full synthetic oil that is speced for the Hyundai with this Redline oil and keeps warranty spec for USA customers. Canada owners you don't have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act so you are on your own. That being said, they would NEVER find out you have Redline in so you never bring it up you change it out, they are so use to no one changing fluids that it is never brought up. They seem discourage early driveline oil changes out of pure stupidity.
DCT /front diff since they are in the same cavity and use the same oil and must be GL-4 rated.
MT-85 75W85 GL-4 Gear Oil
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Rear diff that that has the AWD clutch packs is a GL-5 rated unit. Also this is used in the Kona's transfer case that doesnt need changing till 30,000 40,000 since it is not as hard on the oil in that unit. GL-5 rated oil there too.
75W90 GL-5 Gear Oil
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Source: https://www.hyundaikonaforum.com/threads/conflicting-tow-ratings.2990/
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