There is a law that says if you modify a car, ( lets just say you install a catback exhaust ) the dealership must still honor the warranty, even if its been modded. The only way they can deny your warranty claim is if they can prove the modification you made, was the CAUSE of the original issue.
So say your car is over heating and they deny you warranty service on it because you have a catback exhaust. They SHOULD be required to prove the exhaust was the cause of the over heating, and... By law, they required to prove it. Here is where it gets ugly.... Ford can do anything they want. They are ford. You are just " some person ". If they deny it and refuse to fix it, what can you do ? Start a fist fight with them? No. Be mad at them ? So what ? The only thing the law says you can do, is sue them for not repairing the car, in which they would have to submit evidence proving your exhaust caused the over heating issue. The catch is. They are ford. YOU will have to employee a lawyer on your own dime ( at first at least ). That's many hundreds of dollars. Then, be sure they are not going to fix your car. You'll have to pay someone else to fix the car or rent a car in your own dime. After its all said and done, you could have $3,000 or more tired up in forcing ford to fix a $250 fan module. If you win your case, ford would pay all your cost back, but #1 that is risk, have you been in our legal system? Its all about money. Who has more money, you or ford ? #2 I don't have the time, energy, or money to spare to deal with all that. It would be easier in every way to just replace the fan module yourself and be done with it.
A lot of guys argue that Moss Morrison act, and they are correct. But its not free, its not quick, and its a risk. No thanks , I'll just fix it.
On the flipside. My friend got a check for $7500 from ford because after 2 years and countless times at the dealer, and countless rental cars, they simply could not get his DSG trans to work correctly ( extremely common ). Then they refused to give him a respectable trade-in value to get something else because they could not fix it. So he sued them. His cut was $7k, the lawyer prob got $5k. Then 2 months after getting the check; he let the bank repo the car, used the $7k to put down on a Focus ST before it hit his credit, lol. He loved his NA focus too. And he did buy a $31k focus sT, lol. So ford prob broke even.
Some dealerships maybe super happy and greatful to get warranty work to keep their tech's busy and employed. Other dealerships ( like jarrett ford in Plant City, Florida ), are not happy with just warranty pay. They want "customer pay". Its two different rates. If the warranty will pay the guy 1hr of labor to replace your fan module, and he gets $18 per hour under warranty pay, OR he gets 1 hour to replace the fan module with customer pay at $30 an hour, plus the dealership makes a nice fat chuck on the part, which option do you think he is more likely to take? Double pay and his company makes $250 in parts or $18 and ford takes a $250 warranty claim? He wins, the dealer wins, and the guy with an exhaust loses. Unless he wants to take the risk, time, energy to sue ford over a $250 repair.
Took me 45min to replace the axle in my car, and the part was $160. They denied my warranty because my charge cooler was bigger, and my exhaust got rid of heat faster. I think anyone would have a hard time coming up with REAL LEGAL PROOF that those two parts caused my axle joint to explode. But it was simpler, faster, and extremely less stressful to just bad mouth that dealer forever and to fix the part myself.
Companies spend millions and millions on marketing. Well... The $200 that dealer saved ford will never come close to the amount of bad I will tell every person I know about their service department. The tech that called it in, instead of just replacing the axle, prob spent more time on paper work, then went and did NOTHING for the rest of the day. Ford is by far not the worse though.... Buy a factory rally race car from Subaru, then try to figure out why they refuse to fix a stock one when it coughs up a stock driveline part do to "abuse". Its like selling apple seeds to a apple farm and saying, " don't plant these".
I'm just whining/rambling, now, sorry, l
