Pedal commander vs sport mode

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dhmcfadin

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First of all, Stage 3 Motorsports is not a tuning company. Second, they are selling that warranty to consumers you don’t know about the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Third, you can literally purchase insurance on anything. If you believe tuning insurance exists solely for the chance of losing your warranty, then I would hate to be in the finance office when the dealership sells you every protection plan under the sun.
 
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Gilligan

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First of all, Stage 3 Motorsports is not a tuning company. Second, they are selling that warranty to consumers you don’t know about the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Third, you can literally purchase insurance on anything. If you believe tuning insurance exists solely for the chance of losing your warranty, then I would hate to be in the finance office when the dealership sells you every protection plan under the sun.

This is about the reply I expected.

Hopefully people don’t take your blind advice and research for themselves. I’ve tuned before and will tune again, but if you aren’t fully prepared to blow up an engine and pay to fix it out of your pocket you’re an idiot. Likely? Not at all. But it is possible.
 

dhmcfadin

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This is about the reply I expected.

Hopefully people don’t take your blind advice and research for themselves. I’ve tuned before and will tune again, but if you aren’t fully prepared to blow up an engine and pay to fix it out of your pocket you’re an idiot. Likely? Not at all. But it is possible.

My first post was literally a direct link to the act itself. Not sure how it’s blind advice when it’s in writing.

Here’s a PSA: Buy a real tune from a reputable company who actually data logs. Properly dial in your truck and you will never have an issue. Know your rights under the Magnusson-Moss Act. Don’t take peoples blind assumptions as truth until they provide evidence.
 
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smurfslayer

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My first post was literally a direct link to the act itself. Not sure how it’s blind advice when it’s in writing.

Here’s a PSA: Buy a real tune from a reputable company who actually data logs. Properly dial in your truck and you will never have an issue. Know your rights under the Magnusson-Moss Act. Don’t take peoples blind assumptions as truth until they provide evidence.

Having been through a lemon law suit and arbitration on a 2nd vehicle with aftermarket warranty, I’ve got a little experience in this regard.

1) You’re thinking about this in a fairly ideal way, reality is far different.
Manufacturers and dealer service departments look for problems. If they identify one, they have to ensure it’s covered in order to get money allocated from the mfgr. disqualifies include: Abuse, neglect, modification (which causes or contributes to a failure). Once I filed paperwork to sue under the lemon law, every service department I visited held my vehicle for inspection by the regional rep. This actually worked to my favor by contributing almost a week of downtime total, but, they were inspecting for any excuse to void the warranty. Their focus is any excuse they can use in court or that should stand up in court.

2) MMWA provides for relief if the factory through its agents doesn’t cover a repair.


The guidance from MMWA is what the factory is required to cover by law, through its agents - the dealer service departments. Your contention here is that a properly data-logged tune is practically bullet proof and you basically do not need to worry.

That’s a false assumption. If you have a “directly related” powertrain component failure after the tune, at worst, this is circumstantial evidence, and that’s really all a dealer service department really uses to determine coverage. Think about it this way, you tune the truck, altering the a/f ratio and increasing boost. You suffer an engine failure, and the tech finds burnt plugs, obvious signs of pre-ignition and you’ll need several hard parts. Computer shows you altered the programming.

Have they proven that your mods caused the engine failure? No. Do you honestly expect the service department to cover this?
can you win in court? Maybe, but chances are, you’ll expend more money than the repair to do so, because this won’t be a lemon law suit that lawyers may take on a low retainer or contingency, this would be a MM case for a warranty coverage denial.

There are several phases to this hypothetical endeavor in reality.

the part or software failure
analysis
potential denial of coverage.
you then have to choose the next path
- negotiate with the service department. in the past I offered to pay for the tear down, but if my mods were unrelated, the warranty had to be honored. In the end they agreed to the tear down and report back; that failure was unrelated.

- possibly sue? you have to get a lawyer and provide evidence. You’ll need to hire a court accepted expert witness to testify on your behalf. The MFGR will do likewise and they are guaranteed to say your mods caused the failure - or the manufacturers wouldn’t hire them :)

what do you do in the mean time? If this is your daily driver, you either have to bite the bullet and fix it or get / use another vehicle.

Wait.
if you sue, it’s going to take months, maybe more than a year until you get into a court room.


Now, what if the failure is less clear. Let’s say you develop a very intrusive miss or misfire condition after a tune. You go to the dealer, they troubleshoot, discover your tune and say - thanks, but you’ve altered the engine tune, including the ignition coil duty cycle, fuel map, boost, and a/f ratio and this repair is not covered under warranty.

All the MMWA bluster in the world isn’t going to convince them to cover the repair if they sincerely believe they won’t get paid from Ford. Now, the ball is in your court.
My point here is that if you have tune, then have a failure in a directly related “part” which can be anything in the power train, the service department can, and sometimes will decline to cover that repair under warranty. Because if they do it, and they don’t get reimbursement, they will eat all the costs associated with the repair.

Again, you might prevail in court but it isn’t as simple as waving the warranty act flag and going home.

Now, let’s be honest, all of us have been the recipient of some level of grace from a service department at some level some time. I have too; in fact, I used to live almost literally next door to a Ford dealer and a lot of the mechanics were gear heads. They did quite a bit of aftermarket parts work on my Mustangs, and some troubleshooting.

So a tune isn’t the warranty kiss of death necessarily, but you can definitely not be covered if something lets go and it’s possibly related.
 

RMB_Ryan

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Having been through a lemon law suit and arbitration on a 2nd vehicle with aftermarket warranty, I’ve got a little experience in this regard.

1) You’re thinking about this in a fairly ideal way, reality is far different.
Manufacturers and dealer service departments look for problems. If they identify one, they have to ensure it’s covered in order to get money allocated from the mfgr. disqualifies include: Abuse, neglect, modification (which causes or contributes to a failure). Once I filed paperwork to sue under the lemon law, every service department I visited held my vehicle for inspection by the regional rep. This actually worked to my favor by contributing almost a week of downtime total, but, they were inspecting for any excuse to void the warranty. Their focus is any excuse they can use in court or that should stand up in court.

2) MMWA provides for relief if the factory through its agents doesn’t cover a repair.


The guidance from MMWA is what the factory is required to cover by law, through its agents - the dealer service departments. Your contention here is that a properly data-logged tune is practically bullet proof and you basically do not need to worry.

That’s a false assumption. If you have a “directly related” powertrain component failure after the tune, at worst, this is circumstantial evidence, and that’s really all a dealer service department really uses to determine coverage. Think about it this way, you tune the truck, altering the a/f ratio and increasing boost. You suffer an engine failure, and the tech finds burnt plugs, obvious signs of pre-ignition and you’ll need several hard parts. Computer shows you altered the programming.

Have they proven that your mods caused the engine failure? No. Do you honestly expect the service department to cover this?
can you win in court? Maybe, but chances are, you’ll expend more money than the repair to do so, because this won’t be a lemon law suit that lawyers may take on a low retainer or contingency, this would be a MM case for a warranty coverage denial.

There are several phases to this hypothetical endeavor in reality.

the part or software failure
analysis
potential denial of coverage.
you then have to choose the next path
- negotiate with the service department. in the past I offered to pay for the tear down, but if my mods were unrelated, the warranty had to be honored. In the end they agreed to the tear down and report back; that failure was unrelated.

- possibly sue? you have to get a lawyer and provide evidence. You’ll need to hire a court accepted expert witness to testify on your behalf. The MFGR will do likewise and they are guaranteed to say your mods caused the failure - or the manufacturers wouldn’t hire them :)

what do you do in the mean time? If this is your daily driver, you either have to bite the bullet and fix it or get / use another vehicle.

Wait.
if you sue, it’s going to take months, maybe more than a year until you get into a court room.


Now, what if the failure is less clear. Let’s say you develop a very intrusive miss or misfire condition after a tune. You go to the dealer, they troubleshoot, discover your tune and say - thanks, but you’ve altered the engine tune, including the ignition coil duty cycle, fuel map, boost, and a/f ratio and this repair is not covered under warranty.

All the MMWA bluster in the world isn’t going to convince them to cover the repair if they sincerely believe they won’t get paid from Ford. Now, the ball is in your court.
My point here is that if you have tune, then have a failure in a directly related “part” which can be anything in the power train, the service department can, and sometimes will decline to cover that repair under warranty. Because if they do it, and they don’t get reimbursement, they will eat all the costs associated with the repair.

Again, you might prevail in court but it isn’t as simple as waving the warranty act flag and going home.

Now, let’s be honest, all of us have been the recipient of some level of grace from a service department at some level some time. I have too; in fact, I used to live almost literally next door to a Ford dealer and a lot of the mechanics were gear heads. They did quite a bit of aftermarket parts work on my Mustangs, and some troubleshooting.

So a tune isn’t the warranty kiss of death necessarily, but you can definitely not be covered if something lets go and it’s possibly related.

Nailed it right here. Haven’t seen it as well laid out as that. You pay to play......sometimes. So be prepared. In my opinion, worth the risk, but Ive never bothered with warranty when my fault. I just fix it.

MMWA is not a route to go down in my opinion as laid out by several examples you wrote. A new OEM long block is $5500+- plus labor. Surely not make or break for most.

Sorry to hear about your troubles with lemons. Tough break man, that’s gotta be a really tough deal.

Well said, good post.
 

dhmcfadin

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Having been through a lemon law suit and arbitration on a 2nd vehicle with aftermarket warranty, I’ve got a little experience in this regard.

1) You’re thinking about this in a fairly ideal way, reality is far different.
Manufacturers and dealer service departments look for problems. If they identify one, they have to ensure it’s covered in order to get money allocated from the mfgr. disqualifies include: Abuse, neglect, modification (which causes or contributes to a failure). Once I filed paperwork to sue under the lemon law, every service department I visited held my vehicle for inspection by the regional rep. This actually worked to my favor by contributing almost a week of downtime total, but, they were inspecting for any excuse to void the warranty. Their focus is any excuse they can use in court or that should stand up in court.

2) MMWA provides for relief if the factory through its agents doesn’t cover a repair.


The guidance from MMWA is what the factory is required to cover by law, through its agents - the dealer service departments. Your contention here is that a properly data-logged tune is practically bullet proof and you basically do not need to worry.

That’s a false assumption. If you have a “directly related” powertrain component failure after the tune, at worst, this is circumstantial evidence, and that’s really all a dealer service department really uses to determine coverage. Think about it this way, you tune the truck, altering the a/f ratio and increasing boost. You suffer an engine failure, and the tech finds burnt plugs, obvious signs of pre-ignition and you’ll need several hard parts. Computer shows you altered the programming.

Have they proven that your mods caused the engine failure? No. Do you honestly expect the service department to cover this?
can you win in court? Maybe, but chances are, you’ll expend more money than the repair to do so, because this won’t be a lemon law suit that lawyers may take on a low retainer or contingency, this would be a MM case for a warranty coverage denial.

There are several phases to this hypothetical endeavor in reality.

the part or software failure
analysis
potential denial of coverage.
you then have to choose the next path
- negotiate with the service department. in the past I offered to pay for the tear down, but if my mods were unrelated, the warranty had to be honored. In the end they agreed to the tear down and report back; that failure was unrelated.

- possibly sue? you have to get a lawyer and provide evidence. You’ll need to hire a court accepted expert witness to testify on your behalf. The MFGR will do likewise and they are guaranteed to say your mods caused the failure - or the manufacturers wouldn’t hire them :)

what do you do in the mean time? If this is your daily driver, you either have to bite the bullet and fix it or get / use another vehicle.

Wait.
if you sue, it’s going to take months, maybe more than a year until you get into a court room.


Now, what if the failure is less clear. Let’s say you develop a very intrusive miss or misfire condition after a tune. You go to the dealer, they troubleshoot, discover your tune and say - thanks, but you’ve altered the engine tune, including the ignition coil duty cycle, fuel map, boost, and a/f ratio and this repair is not covered under warranty.

All the MMWA bluster in the world isn’t going to convince them to cover the repair if they sincerely believe they won’t get paid from Ford. Now, the ball is in your court.
My point here is that if you have tune, then have a failure in a directly related “part” which can be anything in the power train, the service department can, and sometimes will decline to cover that repair under warranty. Because if they do it, and they don’t get reimbursement, they will eat all the costs associated with the repair.

Again, you might prevail in court but it isn’t as simple as waving the warranty act flag and going home.

Now, let’s be honest, all of us have been the recipient of some level of grace from a service department at some level some time. I have too; in fact, I used to live almost literally next door to a Ford dealer and a lot of the mechanics were gear heads. They did quite a bit of aftermarket parts work on my Mustangs, and some troubleshooting.

So a tune isn’t the warranty kiss of death necessarily, but you can definitely not be covered if something lets go and it’s possibly related.

I can agree with your points Smurf. Although altering the a/f ratio and increasing boost to the point of engine failure would absolutely be the signs of a terrible tune that no reputable tuning company (5Star for example) would let their client drive away with. Just wouldn’t happen. Reputable tuning companies will flat out tell you no for a tune like this. I am also not talking about suit or lemon law. My point way at the top is; just because you have a tune does not mean your powertrain warranty is void. A tune is not some hack or “turn everything up to 10” deal. It’s about improving a/f ratio, improving efficiency, improving the overall drive-ability in a safe manner.
 
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bmexline

bmexline

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No you won’t.

Yes you will.

If you have a tune, for example, that increases the boost of your turbo by any amount above what the manufacturer set then no one would reasonably expect ford to warranty that part. You caused it to exceed its design limits and it failed. That’s on you.

The fact that you have had well-designed tunes for years and have not had any issues means that you have been lucky so far. It does not mean that the manufacturer is required to warrantee your truck that is operating beyond the limits of its design due to your actions.


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