i was planing on getting the ecu reflash but i was just wondering if it would void my whole warranty?

 

who says honda has to know you have the reflash?

 

lol.

If something happens to your oem engine management, then they'll find out.

 

well if your going to reflash then im guessing you have atleast a raceheader and intake so some people day that voids warranty also so i wouldnt worry just dont drive crazy and break ****

 

ecu issues don't seem to be a major problem, as i've never read about anything ecu related online. if you ever **** your motor up, then yeah honda would probably read the ecu and see that it's been reflashed. other than something major, i bet they wouldn't bother messing with it though.

 

i think even if something were to happen they would need to prove the reflash did it. im pretty sure that by law if it has a problem they must be able to prove that what you did to it caused the problem.

 

alright thx guys for the info

 

It'd be a pretty easy arguement for them to win. Since the reflash raises the rev limiter higher than stock, a record of one shift at 8550 rpm would probably be all they needed.

 

It would if I worked on your car. I look for every and any reason to get out of warranty work.

 

haha. no love from the techs

 

haha awww...dont talk us down like that

anyways, yes it will void your warranty. can we find it? sure, if we wanted, we could find it. will most techs look for it? if they're over the age of 30...NO. i've worked next to more guys that just skip over the aftermarket crap and do warranty work than you'll ever know.

the question is, if you do damage your car enough to think that you can get away with a warranty claim (say the motor spins a bearing), are you going to take the time to remove all the other aftermarket stuff (still assuming you're not just throwing the pcm reflash at it so you can rev higher)? and are you going to do it in a way that a decerning tech as myself wouldn't find? the answer there is probably not.

if you;ve already done a bunch of stuff to the car, i wouldn't worry about it. and if its minor stuff on the motor, most techs aren't gonna blow your spot up. now if you blow a perfectly good motor...that may be another story...


...skeeter...

 

Reflash or not who is going to honor a warranty claim for driver error/abuse?

Skeeter, I think you should stick to wrenching and leave the legal issues up to those who know.

No tech or dealer can void a warranty. Sorry to rain on your parade but the dealer can only deny the warranty claim. A dealer can not void a warranty it didn't issue.

Per the Magnusson Moss Warranty Act the part(s)must have caused or contributed to the cause for which the warranty claim was sought.

The presence of after market parts alone is not legal grounds to deny a warranty.

The investigating dealer is legally obligated to prove that the part(s) had a direct correlation to the warranty claim in order to deny the claim.

If you have a legitimate claim I would hire legal council if a dealer wanted to challenge you.

The only grounds that a warranty is voidable is negligence, racing and abuse and only Honda can void it.

 

Well, if the car's rev limiter is at it's normal spot, and you shift right before it, they really couldn't say anything. That's the way the car is designed. FYI, in case you accidentally misread, I didn't say mis-shift in my first post.

The car wasn't designed by Honda to rev to 8600 (even though it can handle it) so it'd be an easy win for them to point that out as the cause of any internal problem, whether it's related or not.

 

x2

i have knuckle heads coming in with short shifters/slammed si's with all kind of mods looking to get the 3rd gear bulletin..more of a reason that i wont do it. but my manager sucks donkey butt and waranty's everything lmao

 

wat does slammed have anything to do wit the 3rd gear,

i can understand the ss, but i had one on my gsr for 50k miles and never had a tranny issue.

 

nothing but i/h/e numbers on the windows from the track all indicate that the driver beats on the car..1 bad miss shift and bam there goes third, now me the under paid tech has to do the bulletin because some1 shifted wrong..its w/e like i said im forced to do them..idc i just find it a bit unfair..

 

having aftermarket parts on a car doesn't mean that the warranty on the entire car is suddenly canceled. just do the job you were hired to do and be happy you still have a job.

3rd gear isn't going to go out from misshifting; if anything, the motor will when the valves hit the pistons. you're paid to do warranty work, why are you complaining? is the fact that you actually have to do something at a job some kind of wierd concept?

 

This is actually evidence that the car has participated in competition and the warranty can be be voided. Unless the owner is scrubbing off the shredded rubber from the wheel wells and from the under carriage this is additional evidence.

Your service manager is violating a number of policies and agreements set by Honda of America by honoring erroneous warranty claims all for the sake of generating revenue. This may benefit the dealer but is hurting car owners and employees.

If you feel injustice about your manager, take photos and document your findings and report them to the zone rep, who is a Honda of America employee.

 

Thats the Magnasun moss warranty act, exactly how it works

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson-Moss_Warranty_Act

 

I have a question about this 3rd gear ****! I went to the dealer a LONG time ago....as soon as I heard about the bulletin. At the time I had the mods on my car as well.....lowered, Intake, and RH.

They turned down the bulletin not because of the mods....but because they couldn't duplicate the problem....they didn't even mention anything about the mods to me. Funny thing is they said that the problem would most likely progressively get worse to the point where the gear would completely fail. And that's when I should bring it back.

That's the absolute dumbest thing I've ever heard since it seems to me that fixing the problem BEFORE it gets worse would seem alot more logical than just blowing it off and waiting for my gear to completely **** itself before they will actually do anything about it.

And it seems to me like my mods shouldn't matter anyway. Just because I HAVE them doesn't mean I'm operating the vehicle beyond it's operational limits in an abusive manner. And if I were then Honda has the equipment to diagnose mis-shifts, over-revving, bad transmission fluid, etc.

Sounds to me like the advisors are just assuming that people excessively abuse their cars before actually hooking them up and determining whether that is actually the case. In reality I and alot of other people don't drive their modded Si's any more agressively than someone with a bone stock one would.

 

Yeah a lot of people beat the **** out of their Si's when they were bone stock too! Sorry I'm j/k...that just popped into my head after reading that.

 

What dealership you work at?

 

I can guarantee that if I had a car in my bay with an internal engine failure that had a hondata reflash there is no way in hell that anything is getting covered. As soon as American Honda here's that the ecu was reflashed bye bye. Have a nice day.

I agree with you 100% that a tech or the dealership themselves can't "void" a warranty. But if they have a reason they feel that the work isn't covered because of aftermarket mods, abuse etc. hit the road. If the customer doesn't agree with that then heres American Honda's number.

 

Though it happens everyday all over the country, summarily dismissing a legitimate warranty claim based on the presence of the reflash is illegal.

Let us say a customer came in your dealership with a spun connecting rod bearing but had no datalog of over revving his engine. He has the Hondata reflash a cold air intake and a cat back exhaust. Tell us what you would do.

 

I would pull the car out. Tell the service writer he got some super moji parts on the car and go back to doing 30Ks and tbelt combos.