Well a buddy of mine took his car to Goodson Acura after his car started overheating. Well they determined that he needed a new fan motor and a new radiator. Goodson goes on to tell him that his DC header caused the fan/radiator to go bad by producing too much heat. My view on this is that it is nearly impossible for a aftermarket header to do any damage to the fan or the radiator. I mean how does a heat shield really lower the underhood temp anyways? What do yall think?

 

Possible.....sure. Likely....no....but ACURA has enough ammo there to shoot down a warranty claim.

They'll say *The heat sheild is placed there to reflect heat away from the fan, rad etc. The removal of this factory equiptment caused said failure. You're fault, not ours....heres your bill son*

Sorry for the cynicism, but I work at a dealer and know how it goes...

 

Great...so tell we what's up with this one:

My dipstick tube is loose...swivels/moves around when the engine gets warm and some oil is seeping from around the base of the tube. I asked Acura to look at it during my last oil change. One of the service managers told me that "they must have damaged it while installing the header." I installed the header, and never once "damaged" the dipstick tube. He says in 6 years he has never seen any loose Integra dipstick tubes...I saw a whole thread full of them about two weeks ago... . He said he would order the part and call me when it was in...this was two weeks ago today...

 

It doesn't matter if you actually damaged it or not while installing your header. Legally Acura can probably say that...so they do.

 

I noticed the blue wire that leads to the radiator fan quickly turned to a crinkled mess not too long after installing my header. I keep meaning to wrap it with some heat tape or something, but haven gotten around to it yet! And this was like a year ago

 

I say go in with a gun and start shooting; that is how I solve all my problems....

J/K...

Yeah, they have enough reason to deny the claim. I would just tell them thanks and go have some other dealer do it. That way that dealer will not think they can take your *** whenever they want.

 

Well actually his car is no longer under warranty I was just arguing the principle. I don't see how a header could damage a radiator.

 

The dealer will say anything and everything. When i bought my car, it was still under warranty, so i thought I would take it in to the dealer and have my syncros replaces before the warranty ran out of time (nothing wrong w/ them, just wanted new ones )...So i tell the service manager my problem of my gears grinding, then he tells me that:

The reason this is happenening is because the car is not made to be at high rev's, and judging from your age I can tell that the car sees high rev's frequently.

Then he proceeds to give me a lecture on how it is not covered under warranty because the car goes thru so much, but after about an hour of arguement, he finally agreed to do it under warranty

 

Unless the car sits for long periods of time with the engine running (i.e. lots of stop-and-go traffic) I don't think excess heat from the header caused the failure. After all, most of the time the car will be moving and the heat from the header is not going to travel forward, against the wind and the hot-*** air blowing back from the radiator fan, to fry the electrical bits in front of it.

Of course, they'll say whatever they want, but it's bullocks.

 

Dealers suck. Especially Honda-Acura (same bullshyt)

 

Goodson Acura can be a-holes, i went in for a new starter, old one was faulty, ends up eating up the teeth on the flywheel, and then he tells me i need a new ckutch , that its about to go out, so new clutch , and the old one still had plenty of life... goodson acura

 

dont let the dealer f#ck with you lay the law down on them and tell them the customer is always right never take no for an answer becuase if you do your car will never get fixed under warranty.

 

I thought it was up to "Acura" to prove that the part affected, failed due to an aftermarket part installed. Like someone else said, while the car is moving there is very little heat from the header being trapped in that space.

If they say "the heat from the header caused the fan failure", I'd say prove it!

sema.org has some good info regarding these issues.

 

I can understand how they don't want to cover the fan if there are melted wires, but there is no reason why the radiator should have to be replaced.

Have them explain WTF they are trying to replace your radiator. That makes no sense. At all...

Warren

 

The heat shield absorbs heat from the exhaust primaries and protects your radiator. It's acting as a heat sink. If you notice, there are heat shields on the OEM header. I'd assume they are for two reasons, however. The other is to absorb as much heat as possible in order to rapidly heat up the catalysts.

 

It absolutetly DEPENDS on the dealership you go to. I have an aftermarket car alarm. My pass door lock acuator went south. Stevens Creek Acura want $105 to fix it, no warranty since they say Clifford caused it to malfunction.
Hopkins Acura (Redwood City, CA) however, says "no problem, leave your car and we will replace it". They had the car for the whole day but oh well, they fixed it.

 

Heat shields dont "absorb" heat, well they do, but their main job is to reflect heat. Why would you need a new radiator? I mean, it gets hot as hell anyways, i dont see why a little heat from a header would hurt it. Id say the dealership is full of it.

 

Dealership is full of it? How dare you!!
Dealer mechanics are the smartest and most talented people on earth.
They always know the answer to every problem and know everything about
cars. How dare you insult them. to you!!

 

The bad thing is my friend now doubts Honda quality. He thinks radiators should just about last the life of the car. I told him radiators go bad its just life!

 

not necessarily. if you take in a car thats got a whole bunch of bolt ons in it, they don't really know what the hell they are looking at.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by b20_driven &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">not necessarily. if you take in a car thats got a whole bunch of bolt ons in it, they don't really know what the hell they are looking at.</TD></TR></TABLE>

LOL, you bumped a 5 year old thread for that bit of insight?

 

its just bullshit, just take the car to a more respectible dealership. I've had the shiddy DC jdm 4-1 header on my car for 5 yrs now, not one problem other than its a little dinged up on the bottom

Edit: just realized this was 5 yrs old, who the hell bumped this lol