Your partially right. However, they must show that the mod directly caused the malfunction. If an injector shorts and floods the crank case with diesel and spins a bearing, that's hardly the fault of the tune. So you pull the tune, Ford should repair or replace the engine and the world is right. Now if he melts the turbo down because of too much fuel from the tune, he should be SOL. However, I have some experince with melted turbos/tunes and ford did replace the parts.

Dealerships are crooks, they have to be to make money when other crooks come to buy/repair vehicles. They will and should try to deny all warranty claims.

 

Don't get me wrong-I'm a firm believer in a reasonable understanding of what does and doesn't effect a damaged component.I've just had to deal with people that do things like nitrous installs,and when they break the engine-they're crying about how the dealer is denying their claims because they found the bolt holes in the trunk for the bottle and the patched-up holes in the inlet tube for the nitrous nozzle.There's always somebody out there trying to get stuff for nothing,and the people that have legit claims are the ones that suffer due to that .
JL

 

I don't want to get into a disagreement here but a cold fact is the dealer can tell the pcm was reprogramed and how may times it was done with the factory computers and software they use.

the days of when some one could try and fool the software by returning the stock tune are gone. the pcm logs the numbers of reflashing done with time/date and other log/stored hard uneraseable codes. you can't get at. just like the black box inside the air bag control unit dose. from which they can pull the accident data from. giveing it the police,factory and your insurance companies as needed information about the crash from the loop of the last few min'its of always recorded data that ends something like 30 seconds after the crash. just like in a plane's black box but way shorter. some thing like 2 or 3 min'its over and over in the loop till the bag deployment/movement stops it.

in a accident's case they know your speed, brake pressure force apleyed, gforce of the hit that caused the bags to deploy, which senser set them off and a lot more.

just that times have changed big time and there is very little we can do about it right now. plus not far down the line when we get OBD 3 they will know even more. just like GM can right now. as when a GM with north star is reflashed the north star must be disabled or gm knows right as you do it that your playing with the pcm.

 

ford will detect your programmer even if your truck is brought
back to stock,i tried it as my buddy is the head service mgr at a dealership.
He knows and doesnt approve of my use of a programmer but understands
the fun factor and said the power levels I am using shouldent be a problem

So unless you have a friend at the dealership play at your own risk,safe HP
levels are the key to not blowing up your stuff - when u add in some
insane tune up,and mods out the wazoo you can expect trouble down the road
with any vehcile,and thats called racin.....You wanna play,you gotta pay


go fir it rocky !

 

johnny- I agree with you, modifying the vehicle, damaging it, then trying to sneak it by the dealer for a free repair job is b.s.. Also, the dealer can refuse to perform warranty work on any vehicle they suspect was damaged due to modifications, and, guess what, it's up to you as the customer to prove that either the vehicle was never modified, or that the mods did not cause the damage. Sure, you can sue Ford or the dealer, but who has the $$$ for the lawyers on retainer.

 

i surely hate to see how the country will react to obd 3 when it hits. as the world of street performace will change big time.

right now as a shop that handles and preforms h.p. auto trans work, pcm retuning and other performance related work, we will be hurt big time. gm alone already makes it harder then a ford or dodge to retune by haveing to disable the north star units so they don't send off information or block the tuner from being set.

maybe those of us who love and enjoy the art of high performance auto's will be done to driveing 2 types the dayly driver and the preemmission's street rod .

 

Here is a thought. Lets say you bought a new PCM and kept the old. Wouldn't that solve your problems? Say I bought a PCM that was identical to mine and had it flashed and then run it. Say something broke, I could switch PCMs and bring it in. Or say I had a SCT or Hyperjunk unit, download the tune into the new PCM and run it but when I bring it in to service, reuse the original unit. How would they detect that?

 

OTOH, we also know of dealerships that will try blame the customer for the damage if they can get away with it. Case in point, I had my tranny fixed under warranty because I had to threaten them with legal action. Why the problem? Who knows. They blamed it on me using a non GM filter. It was done in my driveway by me.

Also, someone had a Dodge 1 ton truck and towed a trailer that was about 9000#. They tried to deny the warranty because they said he was towing with it and the extra load caused the failure.

 

And those parameters have already been circumvented. If man made it man can break it. With a huge amount of money in the aftermarket don't you think someone is willing to buck up the cash??? Please don't be that naive.

 

that is something that also can't be done as the pcm reads and records the speedometer milage just as the speedo head dose.

to replace a pcm at a dealer. they have to input the vin number,matching speedo milage, and several other needed operating perimiters and vechicle options that make the correct lamps light up in the head unit.

 

They are getting close to doing it out in California from what I'm hearing. Of course they are also trying to bring back that bill saying that only electric cars(don't know what they are going to do about trucks) by some year, can't remember. OBD-III will also screw the exhaust upgrades that people are wanting to do, because they are supposedly going to have a transponder that as soon as your O2 sensor(yes even the diesels will have those sooner rather then later) sends something above spec it goes over to some agency and then boom a ticket. Supposedly that is going to be the way if you throw a dtc, transponder sends the signal, boom a notice and/or ticket. The biggest problem right of the bat that the government is going to have with that is funds for that kind of enforcement, also several other violations that this new technology will do if they implement this usage of it. Another use for the OBD-III(atleast what is talking about here in Tn) is for the newer vehicles equipped with this, at gas pumps there is going to be a receiver that reads how many miles you have gone since your last fill up and you'll be paying a "mile tax" on your fuel rather then the regular tax that we all know and love now, unless you have an older vehicle, then you'll still be paying for that. Unfortunately, I hate to say it, all this will eventually come into fruition, just a question of when.

 

EEC based PCM's absolutely DO NOT have any capability to track mileage or odometer readings-the parameter is not present in the software or the hardware. The Power PC based PCM's have that capability,but it's not enabled in the Ford software. The new PCM used on the 6.4L diesels is also capable of it,and currently it's not known if they actually have that feature enabled or not.
JL

 

I am going to purchase a Programmer and if it has to go to the dealer too bad Ford put cheap bolts in the heads! Ford almost burnt my house down due to a recall and I always had Ford work on my truck and after the fire ford did nothing! Yes they are now being sued by me and my insurance company. Some people need to stop preaching and just relax and enjoy our trucks and help one and another with there Mods. Dodge has no problems with there head gasket. Why dose ford have bad head gasket problems?

 

skirk55 -

Let's see......you and your insurance co. have to sue Ford over a master cylinder switch that wasn't modified and started a fire. Now you're going to put a programmer on your '05 and claim "cheap head bolts" if you have an engine problem, even though your Owner's Guide tells you what will happen, warranty-wise, if you do.

Your logic escapes me, but maybe I'm missing something here.........

Steve

 

This Again! Time to move on