Agreed, but what can you do? It's out in public and if you end up butting heads with the service goons, they simply point out the fine print that the warranties are void if the car has been raced.

Honestly, I prefer to do my all own work anyhow. I've found the level of technical skill at the dealerships to be appalling and get bad anxiety if I let someone else touch my vehicles. The few times I had to take my car/truck in was because I was either too busy to do the work myself, or the scope of the project was so large that I figured the warranty would come in handy (new torque converter etc).

As a result, I made sure my office was equipped with a 4 post lift, tire changer and wheel balancer and we simply do all of our own work on our rides. I know my vehicles inside and out and know that the dealership would never care or match my level of attentiveness when doing the work as they are simply trying to get them in and out as fast as possible. Heck, oil changes are vastly cheaper as we simply got ourselves set up as a distributor of Mobil1, so we can buy the oil in bulk at the resellers cost.

 

It would be spec'd to easily handle the power, otherwise we'd be seeing tons of complaints about clutch failures. But sometimes murphy's law kicks in and the part fails anyhow. Honestly, $hit does happen and there are alot more variables to consider.

I've seen Z06's with clutches fail in a heartbeat at the track as well, and I've been racing mine for 3 years (25000 km at the track) and I'm still on my original oem clutch with no slippage at all.

 

price u pay for buying a new model car. sucks, i agree..

 

I had similar issues with a throw out bearing ,a high idle, peeling paint on the rear valance and a terrible fitting hood on my 98 Mustang SVT, it was the way I was treated with such apathy is what really made me switch to BMW and Porsche. In fact when I took the car in for the hood to be realigned the SA told me "you know these cars ain't BMWs", I was like "what does that have anything to do with my situation". Now BMW has their own issues as well but to be honest I have yet to have an issue after owning now 8 BMWs since 2001 in which the dealer or BMWNA bent over backwards to help me. It was this experience that kind of kept me from buying a 2011 Mustang GT as I didn't want to buy a 1st year run of these cars. As some of you know I sold my 07 997S for a 2011 E92 M3 ZCP car...whats amazing when I read bpmurrs post it brought back memories of the frustrations I had with my 98 Cobra.

I think Ford is making a mistake not to take care of car guys like bpmurr, its the car guys like him that gives great word of mouth which is advertising Ford can't buy. If Ford really does want to turn around and make people believers they really need to watch how they treat customers, especially Mustang customers because they are the most loyal car buyers.

Now I know other manafactuers all have thier horror stories but this one is a shame because it totally could have been avoided.

Dave

 

My car goes back into the dealer this week to have a second OEM clutch installed. Hopefully this one will be a keeper. However, it's still on mine dime just like the McLeod....

 

**** dude. And all this time I thought I was the one going crazy and seeing all the care and attention to detail go out the back door of the dealerships. It doesn't really matter any more how nice and caring the salesmen are to your face, because after you leave that lot, you are all but forgotten, and in some cases totally forgotten, and only another dollar in their pockets. It really is a shame. The terrible thing is, most of America's big companies are doing this.

I too am having issues with my Cobra. You listed seven (7) problems that you are having with yours. I am having four of the same problem.

-- I got a chip in my left rear wheel lip during shipping. Still makes me mad when I wash her.
-- My rear bumper is misaligned and it seems it moves more every bumpy road I go on. I can't help the roads in FL suck. Is that my fault. If I'm going 70 down the interstate and it goes from a smooth blacktop to a rough, bumpy, pot-hole-ridden mess, what do they expect me to do? Stop driving on it by slamming on the breaks at 70MPH and move to the shoulder because it might make a factory mistake even worse under owners hands???
--I've noticed noise coming from my rear when I'm turning. Soft or hard. Short turns or tight ones. Usually right, but sometime to the left as well. A buddy of mine noticed it too and he said he also thinks it's coming from the diff or axle.
--Now my biggest complaint, and it goes right along with yours. I just haven't had bad service, yet, because I haven't taken it in. I like to consider myself pretty good at driving a stick. Most men do, I assume. I think I have a really good subconcious sense of timing between my hands and my feet. As a matter of fact, except for the event I'm about to tell, I've honestly never, once, ground gears while driving a manual tranny. Never. Honest. I know, it's hard to believe. It's something I'm quite proud of. To the point... as a gift to myself, I asked my family to drive my Cobra up to the airport to get me when I went home from Afghanistan on R&R. I wanted driving it to be the first thing I did when I was home. They kindly did so. I stopped at the first (good quality) gas station before hitting the interstate back. As I was pulling off the stop light and approaching the on-ramp, I shifted from 1st to 2nd and to my terror, a loud grinding, clunking noise came from the middle of the car. In my shock I noticed that I hadn't yet released the clutch and it was fully depressed to the floor. Those of you who have driven one know that the sweet spot is quite close to the top of the travel of the pedal and is pretty short. Therefore, the clutch is actually fully disengaged at only half travel on the pedal. I was shocked to say the least. I have never once heard a noise like that come from the gear box and didn't really know what to say or do. My buddy who takes car of her for me was in the back seat (my mom was in the front), and he said that it did it to him one time before while I was gone. That got me really nervous. He is a pretty good driver too I like to think. The second part of this long story (forgive me) is the reverse gear. It has been doing this since I got it from the dealership. Every once in a while, when moving from neutral to reverse, maybe too fast, not sure, because I purposly take my time just to avoid this, it will feel hesitant to slip in and when it does, it clunks real loud. You can hear it pretty well outside the car. The clutch is fully disengaged at this point. So it's not the clutch here. It has to be the gear box. The only remedy I can come up with is to move from neutral, all the way right, hold it for a second or two, then move up against the shift gate wall. This seems to stop the clunking, but not the hesitancy to get there. The shift gates are pretty small in this tranny and I like that, but it seems as if the gate alignment is off a bit from the gear itself. Maybe this is a factory thing? Do these things move themselves? I don't know?

Sorry to have such a long post. I just wanted to share your complaints.

I really wish you well in your troubles and pursuit of justice in these matters. It's a crying shame when Ford will turn it's back on the very same people who kept them from filing bankruptcy.

 

Kory/Ice Hawk:

I remember seeing your posts when you 1st got your car. Sorry to hear about your clutch. My 1991 Jeep Comanche Eliminator used to do the same thing sometimes going into reverse. My 2008 Stang occasionally in cold weather will make the clunk going into 2nd gear. Only sometimes when it's cold. Never when it's warm weather. Just passing along my experience.

To the thread starter. One of the 1st lessons my dad taught when I 1st started driving was the car will take care of you if you take care of it. Once the car is raced hard once, something can go wrong. Ford burnout commercials: do you expect that you can get the same mileage out of the tires doing those burnouts? Common sense says if you're racing your car that parts are going to wear out a lot faster. Be prepared.

 

I had my 2011 in just this past week for exactly the same thing. It's the diff and it happens to me between 9 and 11 mph. It's the carbon fiber discs in the diff. There is no "fix." Just a TSB from ford saying it's normal. It further recommends the dealer can do 5-10 low speed figure eights to break them in a bit and quiet the noise for a period of time. Alternately, adding some friction modifier will quiet it down... for a period of time. My mechanic, who's the mustang and Ford GT guy at the dealer went on a ride with me regarding the noise. Said, I'm the 8th Shelby he's seen for this. He said my best bet is switching to Royal Purple in the diff. He did that for one guy and he's been noise free for a while; granted that guy doesn't drive the car much.

 

Figure eights. Royal Purple. Sounds good. Thanks Ray.

 

NP.

I'll be doing the fluid swap in the spring. My car is about 4 weeks away from hybernation for the winter with just 1,200 miles. In the spring I'll be doing a complete Royal purple change over front to back. I felt a noticable difference in the transmission on my old GT when I made the switch.