BVD

Hi all,

How do you feel about your warranties with regard to the track days you attend and any mods you’ve had fitted?

Yesterday I had the temerity to suggest that one might go beyond the recommended service time of every six months without automatically ripping up your warranty. I was somewhat surprised by the degree of cautious conservatism expressed by all the sporty free spirits here! My modest assertions were met with a fair degree of alarm and scepticism. :D

So I’m interested to hear what you all feel about track days and mods.

Here’s some of the warranty wording:

a) … a replacement part or accessory not conforming to the Manufacturer’s specifications…

b) Any Mazda car used for competition racing or related purposes.


So how do you all read this?

Taka – you have mods fitted and regularly use your car for track days – do you feel you’ve ripped up your warranty, or just compromised certain aspects of it? Timbo – your avatar shows you on a racetrack, and you’re organising “Nationals” at a racetrack – goodbye warranties do you think? Or not?

Many of you have non-Mazda grilles fitted and these may have some effect on the airflow to the engine – no more warranty or what? After-market exhausts not supplied by Mazda – likely to have different back pressure and flow characteristics – vroom, vroom – off goes your warranty do you think??

Or do you all plan to try and lie – or quickly strip off all your mods – if a warranty issue occurs?

My belief is that a key part of the warranty is the bit that says as a result of…..

I don’t believe that (for instance) Hymee’s excellent products automatically invalidate your warranty. I have a similar grille (made by myself). Does it have an effect on airflow? Yes. Was it used to limit or deny my warranty claim? No. In fact I showed it to the service manager and he said “Nice. Good idea.”

Why wasn’t it used against me – the car clearly has a non Mazda mod fitted? Because it had nothing to do with the issue that the warranty was about (Just as having a car serviced at 8 months instead of 6 has nothing to do with most claims. The fact that I haven’t kept to the suggested times wasn’t used against me either).

So how about it everybody – what are your feelings about track days and mods? It’s a grey area – how dark is the grey, and much does grey bother you?

lurch519

read up on the magnusson moss act. any modification to a vehicle such as aftermarket parts will not automatically invalidate your warranty. it is the manufacturers responsibility to prove that the after market part or accessory caused a specific failure.

ie, put an aftermarket exhaust on your car and the radio stops working, to begin with, the two are totally separate systems, so the exhaust couldnt have caused your radio to fail, so no, the warranty on the radio would not be void.

second, have the exhaust on your car, and your engine fails, mazda has to prove that the addition of your exhaust caused the failure of your engine.

Revolver

I'm not going to get into this beyond agreeing in general terms with Lurch.

However, I do think you were over-egging the pudding a bit with that comment BVD.

Gomez

The Magnusson Moss act is not worth the paper it's written on in Australia.

BVD the way I read the warranty booklet, Mazda won't warranty any non Mazda parts, obviously, and they will void the warranty claim on any failure caused by track use.

lurch519

whoops, i missed that bvd was down under

Gomez

Throwing the bait in and looking for a bite, the bastard....

Revolver

Hence limiting my agreement to his general argument.

Revolver

Which is why I confined myself to a nibble... :D

sco

Not another warranty discussion - It looks like this week's forum is proudly brought to you by the letters W, A, R, N, T and Y.

This was discussed ages ago... a search might be worthwhile...

As for the Hymee Enhanced products... some tidbits... the mesh that Hymee selected was based on minimising the impact on airflow. Dealers also fit Hymee products to cars they sell to customers (in fact a service manager at one of the dealers has told Hymee that the second they fit an exhaust, the car is sold the next day... I heard it with my own ears) -- so it would be hard for someone to say a warranty is voided by these products unless those products directly contributed to a failure.

BVD

Gomez, I agree exactly with both your comments.

I believe that my reading is the same as yours - i.e. that they will void a claim on any failure caused by track use. And that seems entirely reasonable to me.

Whilst they wish to protect themselves from abusive treatment of the car, driving on a track is not necessarily abuse - it is after all marketed as a sports car, so doing a little modest zoom zooming is reasonable behaviour. However, for some claims it's point that might well see some discussion.

Absolutely. Guilty as charged. Nothing worse than having your post ignored, and a small nudge of the hive will often stir up the bees... :D

BVD

Exactly - "unless those products directly contributed to a failure".

I also took some care to ensure that the mesh I used was not overly restricting the airflow. But, as usual, it's a trade-off - the bigger the mesh the bigger the stones that can still get through. The smaller the mesh, the more you risk restricting air flow under certain conditions. I road tested my grille as throughly as I could without having access to wind tunnels etc - i.e. just real world tests up hills, under load, on hot days etc.

My conclusion was that the effects were well within tolerance for the purposes and conditions under which I actually use the car. However, I would expect, and accept, that it might be at least a point of discussion if I was making claim for a failure that might have involved an overheating issue.

Here's a story about Mazda and grilles:

Incidentally, when we got our questionaire from Mazda about the car I sent back quite a detailed appraisal. Among other things I mentioned that the boot light was cunningly placed under the spare wheel, so that it failed to illuminate the boot, that the dipstick was an especially weak design, and that the exposed air conditioner condenser and oil cooler were vulnerable and unprotected for use in Australian conditions. I provided photos to make the point.

Without mentioning names or locations, I mentioned that at the very least Mazda were missing an aftermarket opportunity to sell grille kits, and that some were already being sold here - and even fitted by dealers in some instances.

I received quite a sniffy letter back saying in part that the writer doubted that any of their dealers would be involved in fitting non Mazda items (HA HA HA!). But they hoped I would enjoy the enclosed pen - for my troubles. There was no pen enclosed, and clearly never had been. :D

The moral of this is that "Mazda" is not some kind of automatically punitive many fisted monster, but just a collection of individuals - with the usual mixture of fallability, decency, bastardry, knowledge, ignorance, etc.

I believe that mostly a reasonable and honest approach by a customer will get a response in kind. Shifty, aggressive, or demanding tactics however just tend to get everyone's back up and bring out the hard-**** in dealers and companies.

timbo

Given my profession, I have only one thing to say: it's all about risk management; you have to assess the risks relating to a particular action in terms of their probability and severity, and then put in place considered approaches to manage these risks and moderate their effect. But sometimes, **** happens :p

takahashi

I never thought drive the sport car at sport speed will do any harm to a real sports car.

If I am not going to track, I might just buy a Volvo.

BTW ... Mazda Australia DID organised the track day for us in Oct 2004. So I think THEY KNOW TRACKING is ok!

Mazda Japan modified with their MazdaSpeed product and hold race meets :o

Modding cars is about enjoying the car. Japanese do that to Nth degree. Mazda support it in Japan.

If Mazda Australia does not follow... then i think they are a bunch of wussies.

auzoom

I have twice been invited to 2 track days at Winton Raceway by my dealer. Let them try and void my Warranty !

While I agree that the magnusson moss act is not an Australian law, the merit of it is (I believe) in place in Australia already as the Consumer Rights Laws. A warranty can say what it like, but the consumer law says that they can only claim what is reasonable. Eg its reasonable that the turbo charger you fitted running at 5 bazillion PSI caused your engine to blow up, but its not reasonable that the exhaust you fitted did.

As for this "a) … a replacement part or accessory not conforming to the Manufacturer’s specifications…"

Its considered anti competative, much like the fact that you will void your warranty by not getting it serviced at a mazda dealer. Again, they have to prove that its reasonably outside the spec of the part replaced.

My 2 cents.

Andrew

Hymee

iTrader: (1)

Shall I close this thread now? I think all the issues have been covered, again?

I think this is a pretty open phrase: "or related purposes". Related to racing? Related to competition? Mazda "marketed" the car to me by relating it to the sucess of the engine in competition.

It is all about being reasonable.

BTW - Did they sell off all those "pre-release" cars that they let the pre-order'ers drive around the various tracks... with a heavily discounted price and now waranty?

This is it... A "track" day, where we educate ourselves by driving our cars in a safe, controlled environment is not racing. And it is not competition.

Lock & Load

[QUOTE=Hymee]Shall I close this thread now? I think all the issues have been covered, again?

QUOTE]

Hymee ................the slasher.....ha ha ha ....kills treads with a swift stroke

B......free
michael

timbo

Lock

Have you considered spending some time working out how to use the forum properly, such as how to do quotes? It just might make what you write a little more intelligible

Lock & Load

Timbo

Stress and anger will give you a stroke or a heart attack... get over it :p

I am more than pleased at the way i use the forum :p excuse me for not being a perfectionist


B...free
michael

Hymee

iTrader: (1)

I thought it was a perfectly polite request. Thanks for getting that one right Lock. As you might have found out, you don't really have to do anything special to make a quote happen properly.

Cheers,
Hymee.

BVD

Are you serious Hymee?

Close a thread because the topic has been discussed before?! Wouldn't that be something of a misuse of your position as a moderator? I've always thought that you did an excellent and well balanced job of moderating, but that sounds like a very odd threat?

Did something I say offend you? Are you afraid of somebody misinterpreting comments about the items you sell? The comments from myself and everybody else have all been entirely positive regarding warranty and every other aspect of your after-market offerings.

Why not just close the whole forum - we've all talked about just about every aspect of the RX8 before - over and over and over...

New people buy the car, and turn up on these forums every day, and they haven't read all our opinions before - or, just as importantly, had a chance to express their own. It would be ridiculous to expect them to wade through every post before they asked a question or started discussing something. Have you tried finding something specific using the search engine on this site?? Easy to find things vaguely related, but very hard to find a specific fact.

Closing a topic on a forum because it's been raised before is as absurd as throwing somebody out of a pub for talking about a footie match when the "regulars" already did it yesterday.

Come on Hymee, lighten up, you just made some very good points about the rules regarding track work as opposed to racing, and warranty in general - and I'm sure a lot of new owners would have been very interested to read them.

Warranty is an issue than many owners are interested in - so expect to see it discussed fairly regularly - ditto for all manner of other topics that we've done over and over. That's what forums are for aren't they - a place to allow people to get together and waffle on about things that they're all interested in?

BVD

I agree entirely Taka, thanks for a very pertinent contribution.

There often seems to be a fair bit of nervousness on this issue - particularly (and understandably) among people who don't know all that much about either the mechanical side of cars, or the law.

Many times on car forums I've seen people advocating stripping everything off before they take a car to a dealer with any kind of problem. I don't imagine that too many dealers are fooled by this though - especially if they've serviced the car before. I've also seen posters suggesting just lying about all sorts of issues that they could in fact have been honest about.

I believe that the protection for owners under warranty is much more robust and flexible than many owners apparently fear.

My purpose in raising it - both for the time issue in the other thread, and the modding/racing one here - is to help reassure people that you will not automatically get shafted because of something you did or didn't do to your car - unless it is genuinely relevant or contributory to the failure.

It's good to see some real world points and experiences raised to support this view. Thanks to all who have contributed rational support to the notion that we won't automatically get screwed for what we do to our cars.

xxup

I support BVD - let the waffle continue - disk space is cheap.. :D :D :D

Lock & Load

BVD

Good on you for having the ***** to TRY AND stop thread bullying , at times Hymee takes it upon himself to be judge jury and executioner .

(Hymee ................the slasher.....ha ha ha ....kills treads with a swift stroke )

Hence my previous comment relating to his bullying .

B....free
michael

BVD

Thank xxup and Lock.

I'm not sure what Hymee's getting at there - maybe he'll let us know later?

I wonder if he's a little cheesed about my mentioning to Mazda that others were already making grilles?

In fact, we exchanged several letters and it went something like this:

CHRIS: (Responding to survey) Hi Mazda, great car, but a couple of things suck including your failure to protect the aircon condenser and the air cooler.

MAZDA: We are not aware of any problems with this issue. I will pass your concerns on to somebody else (subtext: "who unfortunately won't reply or tell you anything either" ). Please have this pen for your troubles (subtext... "and **** off....")

CHRIS: Well, I don't imagine that Mazda would see selling a few extra condensers as a problem - but some of the owners might. I know of several instances, here and in the US, where this has already happened. With regard to "Australian conditions" I have been insuring cars for 40 years without ever making any claims - except for damage caused by stones on local roads - a total of five windscreens to be exact. I am not catastrophising or fantasising about the danger to the RX8 - this a real issue in many parts of Australia.

If Mazda won't change the design for local conditions, have you considered offering some protection as an after-market option. This is already being done by others, including some that were fitted by at least one Mazda dealer.

BTW I hope your design department is more efficient than the department responsible for putting gift pens in envelopes - they failed to do it.

MAZDA: SNIFF! We very much doubt that one of OUR dealers would be so reckless and naughty as to fit NON APPROVED parts - it goes directly against our "we'll scratch your back if you kiss our ****" clause in the dealer contract.

Please accept this nice cap with a rotor emblem on it...... and **** OFF!

CHRIS: (Now wearing hat) HA HA HA! Makes and fits own grille.


OK, I wasn't quite so rude, and neither were they - but that was the gist of the exchange. Harmless enough. And, hey, check out the hat.... :D

Grr... damn these typos. Why do I only ever see them after hitting the post button? :o

xxup

So that's how you get a pen AND a hat... :D