Yellow05

Tomorrow I am putting on my Steeda CAI and tunning my car with a diablosport predator, before I do, I was wondering if this is going to void my cars extended warranty?

Thanks

DoctorQ

I'd recommend doing a search on this forum for "Void Warranty CAI"... there's a TON of threads with excellent info. Bottomline: keep your stock intake, and when you do require Dealer Warranty work, take off the aftermarket CAI, put on the stock intake, and reflash PCM back to stock tune. Put on ~ 50 miles of normal driving (to data log PCM), and take it in. Otherwise, you could end up in a p*ssing contest with the Dealership over what part caused what problem.

Yellow05

Okay, great advice, thanks

sodaman

no aftermarket mods will void your warranty, but many mgr's etc would like you to think so and that is who you will be dealing with. So find a mod freindly ford dealer is my best advice, then they will only void things that are caused by your modifications not the whole warranty. Magnusson warranty act or something like that explains the law on this matter. Otherwise ford could say you can only buy are parts etc, which is illegal but many dealerships will try and keep you from doing anything to them. I would ask for people that live in your area to give you some heads up on good dealers. Good Luck, you wont be sorry tuning it, If you havent picked a tuner yet, Doug at Bamachips is awesome and he is now doing predator as well as sct. Later.

Onirb

Check with your dealer. I went over to mine yesterday and for them the rep said it basically like this.

"If the mod causes the problem you are responsible, no matter if we do the work our yourself. We are not going to penalize you if you change your muffler and the radio breaks we are not like that. But if you put on a blower and it explodes then you have a problem."

Dougxox

what he said

blkstang06

If your really worried just put the factory air box on and flash back if you take it in for warranty work!..........Brent at brenspeed suggested this to me on a couple different warranty issue's.....

Verted

On August 9th, 2005 Blake posted:
I have not seen any response that confirms or denies this. It's my hope that a Ford mechanic (or somebody who knows what he/she is talking about) will comment on this.

In the past I have extended the dealer the courtesy of replacing the tune with the factory one, along with the CAI, etc., when bringing the car in. That may not be enough, no matter how many miles you put on afterwards.

By the way, I believe that after you reset your vehicle's onboard computer and restore the stock programming with your Programmer, you should disconnect the battery (negative/minus end) for about 5 minutes and then drive it around for a while, before visiting your Ford dealer. Will this remove all traces of the "crime" that you have committed? I dunno . . . but somebody out there does.

Verted

m05fastbackGT on February 18th, 2007:
(http://forums.bradbarnett.net/showth...nty+Programmer)

Willie

I believe it's up to the dealership. Here's my experience.

I bought my '03 Cobra used with 9k miles. It had a Borla Stinger and Tri-Ax shifter. Everything in the engine compartment looked original including the airbox. Heck, it still had a Ford paper element filter! Based on all this, I assumed the PCM had never been flashed. When my 36 months expired, I decided to purchase the extended warranty. My service advisor told me that they had to "inspect" the car. At this time, it had only 17k miles on it. I asked what "inspect" meant. Basically he said not to worry about it; that all they do is connect their "diagnostic machine" to it to read "stuff". I assumed they were going to check to see if the the PCM was flashed. I wasn't worried at all because I KNEW the flash was original. Thirty minutes later, all was well and I bought the warranty.

About six months later, I connected some indicator LEDs. One was for the intercooler pump. Something odd occurred. The PCM was turning the pump on almost all the time which I know isn't Ford's programming. This is when I started suspecting my PCM was flashed. Sometime later, I was driving on I-8 in the middle of the Arizona desert and up comes a black Porsche from California. Let's just say my speedo did read 162 when we decided enough was enough. This confirmed my suspicions. The factory has the speed limited to 155.

Bottom line: The dealership allowed me to purchase the extended warranty with a modified tune file.

m05fastbackGT

I don't mean to start up a flame war here but I've mentioned time and time again in other threads as well as other forum members that the dealer can only refuse to service a vehicle under a warranty claim..Therefore it's not up to the dealers and only Ford itself has the legal authority to void their factory warranties and that's only if it's been proven that an aftermarket product was directly responsible for causing the warranted part in question to fail..If in the event a dealership claims otherwise ? don't even bother wasting your time getting into an argument, just walk away and find another dealership that's mod friendly and isn't such a bonehead

Verted

What you say is true, m05fastbackGT & Willie. And I've had really good luck with my heavily modded camaro . . . mind you, when the rotors got warped, I replaced them with Wilwoods. My rear defroster was replaced/fixed twice under warranty.

All dealers have a database attached to our cars' VINs.

Is there a field for "unauthorized modifications" in this database? If there is, then one disgruntled Service Manager can burn us.

Examples:
HIDs installed - entire electrical system warranty is null & void
CAI installed - entire drive train system warranty is null & void
SFCs installed - entire chassis system warranty is null & void
LCAs installed - entire suspension system warranty is null & void