K&N High Flow Intake Kit

[delcecchi]

I can see people not caring about emissions, but reliability?

[Scott K]

Even the tow mode increases power by about 50hp. It also changes shift points, timing, increases exhaust temps, puts more load on the turbo. All things that the vehicle wasnt designed to do. Trust me, I get people with jacked up trucks, tires twice the size that came on the truck, then complain their stock ball joints wore out in 35,000 miles. Or people with after market turbos, and a High performance tune installed in the truck. A truck that from the factory came with 380hp, but now has close to 600hp, and 1200 pounds of torque, yet they want warranty on their tranny that couldnt handle the extra power. I get these same trucks that come in after a local fair, that broke down in the truck pulling contest, with a blown engine, and they want Ford to give them a new truck, because their suped up, jacked up, over sized wheel truck, blew its engine while pulling a 50,000 pound weight box in front of a crowd at the fair, and they dont want that lemon any more.

When the manufacturer designs the truck, they design it behind a 385hp engine, not one with 600hp, that has been modified beyond normal road driving, then used to do off road, entertainment. Even the pro pulling devices break down during pulls, ones that have been designed to take the 1500hp engines. If you play, you pay.

[PurpleFloyd]

I agree with the concept that doubling the HP of a truck should remove the manufacturer from liability if something breaks but by the same token if they install equipment on the vehicle to improve emissions and if the owner follows the recommendations and has a failure of the equipment that will cost them 5 grand to fix even though the vehicle has less than 90,000 miles on it then where is the responsibility there?

Generally the economy improvement modes in tuners are not going to put extra stress on the drive train and the one that I have actually includes gauges to monitor the boost, exhaust temps and even things like whether the TC is locked or unlocked.If these things are so crucial to monitor they should be standard equipment. That being said, by having them on the tuner I am able to watch them and can say that the changes that are giving me improved MPG are not creating any problems with boost, EGT's or anything else. Now,if I tuned it for max performance then I would think it may become an issue.

[Scott K]

I guess a couple thoughts PF

First lets say you design a new cabinet. You spend a lot on testing, and you are confident your cabinet is more then strong enough, and made out of quality material to outlive a 5 year warranty. So you offer a 5 year warranty along with the cabinet.

A customer calls you up and says the door broke off their cabinet, so you go to his house to fix it, but you find out he nailed on a step to it, so he can stand on it, so he can reach up to the top cabinets. What do you tell this customer? Do you tell him ok no problem, I will fix it for you for free, do you make him a special one to support his 300 pound frame when he puts a new step on it? Or do you tell him, the cabinet was not designed as a step, and it will not support your weight, and you will not warranty the cabinet because he used it as it wasnt intended?

Then lets look at what 90,000 miles is, and the abuse that your truck goes through in 90,000 miles. 90,000 miles equals 32 trips from New York to LA. 90,000 miles equals 3.5 times around the earth.

Now lets look at the abuse, the pot holes, the extreme heat, the extreme cold, the pulling at 3000-6000 rpm for hours at a time. The lack of maintenance, the un predictable abuse, damage, accidents, etc.. and people complain when something breaks, or wears out on a vehicle before it is out of warranty. They complain more when it is out of warranty. Now this is just stuff that goes wrond with a stock truck, now add in their modifications, and the abnormal uses of it.

No manufacturer is going to warranty a truck for 100,000 miles, with the approval to go ahead and modify the truck as you see fit, and we will still warranty it unconditionally.

When I worked at the dealer, I was the diesel tech. I just used my discretion of whether their modification caused the damage, if it did, I would just price the job out and tell them warranty isnt going to caver this repair, then listen to them complain. I didnt care, I could just call Ford and see what they would say, and that little phone call puts a ding on their warranty, to question, and void other warranty work.

If a truck with huge tires comes in with a snow plow on it, with bad ball joints with 30,000 miles, I would price them out. If that same truck came into me with no snow plow, or with a plow, but factory tires, I would warranty it. If a truck came in with bald rear tires, and a power chip, with 15,000 miles with a bad tranny, more then likely he would be paying to rebuild his tranny.

I once had a younger college age lady that bought a new car from us. She came in at 18,000 miles with a rod sticking through the block. After a little inspection, the factory oil filter was on it. We asked her when she did her last oil change, she said that no one told her that she needed to do one. She said when she bought the car she paid extra for the no cost maintenance package, that she didnt need to do any maintenance on it until 36,000 miles. Well she was correct, all maintenance was included with the cost of her car, she didnt need to pay for anything done to her car, but it still needed to be done. But no one told her that, so because of the lack of maintenance Ford didnt cover the repair, and she took the dealer to court, and won, because the car salesman didnt tell her she needed to still bring the car in for maintenance.

[PurpleFloyd]

That isn't what I said Scott.

If I build something and it fails to preform the way it should I fix it. I use quality hardware that has a lifetime warranty and if it fails then I replace it for the customer. Yes, if they modify it and it breaks then they are out of luck but what I said had to do with the vehicle having an emissions failure while operated properly in original condition with no modifications to it.

As I said in my post- if someone does modify a vehicle and bumps up the HP then yeah, I think they lose their right to warranty. My complaint is with the emissions mandates and the fact that the systems that are being implemented are unreliable, costly in the case of mine, require injecting raw diesel directly into the exhaust to burn out the soot that collects in it,which certainly produces bad things during the process.

I have no argument for your stance that modifying a vehicle should void the warranty. I do contend that many of these modifications being made are done because the manufacturers are not doing a good job of designing their systems and the cost of repairing poorly designed systems is too costly to justify especially since paying to repair only gives you dso long before the expense returns as the replacement fails.