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Ford Service - Identifying Failures Caused by Performance Mods


roots57

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Stumbled across this today. Good info to see how and what they look for, and how they attempt to identify and document your performance mods. Anyone see this before? Its good to know this stuff if you are modifying a factory warrantied vehicle.

 

https://ford.oemdtc.com/GSB/G0000128.pdf

 

Wow, anything is potentially grounds for denial of a claim. Just as bad as an insurance company when they lose the bet. That's why I wait until all warranties are expired before I fiddle. Thanks roots57

Edited by vega
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Wow, anything is potentially grounds for denial of a claim. Just as bad as an insurance company when they lose the bet. That's why I wait until all warranties are expired before I fiddle. Thanks roots57

 

I haven’t heard of Ford denying claims for silly reasons or technicalities. It’s there to protect them from folks who legitimately abuse their vehicles.

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The only one that kinda surprised me was that if you have an aftermarket exhaust, like the MRT axle-back system and one of your turbos goes out, there's a good chance they will deny the warranty claim. The rationale is that it alters the back pressure, which can over spin your turbo. Not sure how much truth there is to that.

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I saw that one way they check for evidence of engine re-calibration (tuning) is to compare the ignition counter to what should be consistent with the cars mileage/age. I'm assuming that each time you flash the PCM with a custom tune, or return it to the stock tune, it resets the ignition counter. Maybe there is a way to spoof the ignition counter and set it to a specific number? Maybe as part of the tune itself, or using FORScan? That way you could generally keep it consistent with what your car should have for an ignition count, regardless of how recently it was flashed. I guess it would be pretty obvious evidence of an aftermarket tune if your car has 15k miles on it and the ignition counter is only at 25.

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Seems stupid to base it off ignition counter. I know that it resets when you unplug the battery. I think that my OBDLink app has an option for Ignition Counter, i don't recall seeing it in FORScan,but i haven't found/fiddled with all the features of FORScan.

 

I doubt they could base a warranty denial solely on a discrepancy in the ignition counter, it looks like they just use this as one potential indicator that, coupled with some other things, could be used to determine aftermarket tuning was done. That was one question I had, does it reset with battery disconnect or not. If so, its a pretty easy argument to say it wasn't from flashing an aftermarket tune, but from doing something simple like changing a bulb, or installing a dash cam. Neither are something disconnecting the battery is even necessary for, but at least its a plausible answer you could have on the ready, in case they challenge you on it.

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Seems stupid to base it off ignition counter. I know that it resets when you unplug the battery. I think that my OBDLink app has an option for Ignition Counter, i don't recall seeing it in FORScan,but i haven't found/fiddled with all the features of FORScan.

FORScan, will show you ignition cycles since PCM flash, miles driven since PCM flash, it will also show you majority of your soft codes that normal odb wont pick up. which when you flash a tune, everything loses connections and throws a soft code. I always go in after I flash and clear those out.

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