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I have to disagree. Manufacturers select materials of construction based on the intended application, and they undergo laboratory and field testing to ensure that they are indeed fit-for-purpose. For instance, there are tens of years worth of exposure that the paint departments of the car companies have conducted on the painted panels, many exposed with deliberately introduced flaws - just to see if the paint will delaminate or spall due to corrosion. Same goes with everything else - it is completely unreasonable to expect that in the course of normal use, the car wouldn't be exposed to salt. Granted, they don't make things from nickel alloys because of the cost, and therefore the rust-through warranty is limited (to 10 years!) - but to impose on the owners the duty of hosing down the underside (rustproofing coating, anyone?) after each drive is beyond what anybody (including the courts) would consider reasonable.
Further, the presence of corrosion on the broken spring would be yet another indication that the issue lies with the material - the spring steel is not expected to crack under normal use (the question of the track use is to be discussed) and if it did, that's because there's something wrong with the metallurgy or the type of steel used.
You completely missed my point. Try going back amd reading it again. My point is they made a judgment call based on perceived conditions.
Fact is you spout how companies have done metallurgy studies abour encountering certain conditions but its a known fact and has been for years that in the midwest and northeast they salt the roads heavily and it destroys car chassis’s in a number of years. This is not something I am pulling out my ass this has been going on for years. Exposed to salt on a repeated basis untreated metal will come apart.
Now given that fact and he does live in cold winter salted roads area of the country. When the guys at ST look at the pics and see a rustey muffler , rust on the paint of joint seams that you can see in the pics he posted they cry foul.
Driving any car on salted roads all the time will cause it to rust out . Painted or not.
You can spout all you want truth is the undercoating business is huge in those states for that very reason.
Plus salt is extremely hard to clean out and rid off once you have got on and in nooks and crannies on a car.
Example is taking your car to the Bonnieville Salt flats which my friends have done and strong advise against doing. They said it was near impossible and took tear downs and multiple washes to get rid of salt.
So in theory someone drives on roads that have been salted it can be a problem again I am not saying this is what Jeff did. I am saying from the manufacturers standpoint given where he resides and given the pics they are gonna go oh salted roads issues. Nope no warranty.
You guys conveniently forgot technically coilovers are not for street use . Did Jeff read the fine print of the warranty? Is it a limited liability warranty? Is it a manufacturers warranty against possible manufacturer defects?
He is not telling us everything and I could hazard to say there is fine print in it that outlines their ability to deny based on usage.
I digress though. Fact is most parts like this are intended for track and off road use. Sure they will sell it to you and let you put it on your street car might even warranty it except extreme conditions.
I can bet they look at salted roads as extreme conditions because they are and abosolutely no manufacturer warranties damage from salted roads otherwise people would be turning in their 2-3 year old cars under manufacturers warranty due to rust from Salted roads in Minnesota
, Ilinois , Indiana,Michigan,Mass,Maine,Vermont etc...
Again this is just some facts that they would be working from.
So am I sorry this happened to Jeff ? Yes, do I think he has a case , well like I said in my earlier post had he presented it properly they might have warrantied it as it is now, no.
Does it kinda suck that it happened ya.
I could go on for days pointing little legal aspects that lawyers will use and point out.
In the end its a performance part and that means that things can and do happen that may exceed manufacturers warranty .
A lot of performance part manufacturers do not even offer warranties because they cannot predict what could happen to a part put on a race car subject to extreme race conditions. Things break.
All I am doing here is pointing all of this out and having been in parts manufacturing and selling first hand experience at the manufacters level.
I wish Jeff the best in a resolution yet I feel he is being his own worst enemy in the presentation like I have already mentioned.
![[wink]](/images/smilies/wink.gif "Wink [wink]")
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