Hyundai Santa Fe, Hyundai Tucson, model years 2025 to 2026. Filed by Hyundai Motor America and reported to NHTSA on 26 August 2025. 29 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says Hyundai Motor America (Hyundai) is recalling certain 2025-2026 Tucson and Santa Fe vehicles. The connecting rod bolts in the engine may have been improperly tightened, which can cause a loss of drive power and engine damage, possibly resulting in an oil leak.
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
Hyundai's own number for this recall: 281. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 25V549 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 25V549 cover?
- Hyundai Santa Fe, Hyundai Tucson, model years 2025-2026.
- What is wrong with them?
- Hyundai Motor America (Hyundai) is recalling certain 2025-2026 Tucson and Santa Fe vehicles. The connecting rod bolts in the engine may have been improperly tightened, which can cause a loss of drive power and engine damage, possibly resulting in an oil leak.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- A loss of drive power increases the risk of a crash. An oil leak in the presence of hot engine components can increase the risk of an engine compartment fire.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Yes, and it is free. Dealers will replace the engine, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed October 23, 2025. Owners may contact Hyundai customer service at 1-855-371-9460. Hyundai's number for this recall is 281.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. Hyundai calls this recall 281, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “A loss of drive power increases the risk of a crash. An oil leak in the presence of hot engine components can increase the risk of an engine compartment fire.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 25V549 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | Hyundai Motor America |
| System at fault | Engine And Engine Cooling:Critical Fasteners |
| Reported to NHTSA | 26 August 2025 |
| Model years | 2025-2026 |
| Vehicles named | HYUNDAI SANTA FE, HYUNDAI TUCSON |
What the notice says today
The defect
Hyundai Motor America (Hyundai) is recalling certain 2025-2026 Tucson and Santa Fe vehicles. The connecting rod bolts in the engine may have been improperly tightened, which can cause a loss of drive power and engine damage, possibly resulting in an oil leak.
The consequence
A loss of drive power increases the risk of a crash. An oil leak in the presence of hot engine components can increase the risk of an engine compartment fire.
The remedy
Dealers will replace the engine, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed October 23, 2025. Owners may contact Hyundai customer service at 1-855-371-9460. Hyundai's number for this recall is 281.
What it said before
Nothing has changed while we have been watching. We last read the wording of this campaign on 17 September 2026, and it matched the copy we already held.
That copy hashes to 48614b5ff71cba3026500d9d50a0d94f…, so if it is ever edited the change is provable rather than a matter of memory.
This is one of 588 notices in the record whose component field names engine and engine cooling. Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 47 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The models named here, across their whole recall history
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 25V549, wording as read on 17 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/25v549/
The copy quoted above hashes to 48614b5ff71cba3026500d9d50a0d94f…. If the notice is reworded later, that fingerprint will not match, which is how a reader checks that the quotation was of the version we say it was.
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
Other Hyundai notices we hold
- 26V493: 2027 Genesis G80
- 26V452: 2025 Kona Electric and 2026 Kona
- 26V432: 2023-2024 Ioniq 5
- 26V400: 2025-2026 Tucson, Tucson Hybrid, Tucson Plug-In Hybrid Electric (PHEV)
- 26V316: 2025-2026 Santa Cruz, Tucson, Tucson Hybrid, and Tucson Plug-In Hybrid Electric (PHEV)
- 26V314: 2025 Ioniq 5 and 2026 Ioniq 9
- 26V308: 2024-2026 Elantra Hybrid
- 26V307: 2015-2016 Elantra and 2016 Elantra GT
All 236 Hyundai campaigns we hold · Every manufacturer in the record
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 25V549 on 23 August 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
61ffea7e - Consequence
4936d697 - Remedy
3256d0e5
We first read this notice on 21 August 2026. It has not moved since. If it ever does, these characters will not match, and the change will be dated here.
The wording we hold for 25V549 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Hyundai Santa Fe, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
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Owners of these cars
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