Modified Car warranty
Discussion
A question.
Lets say you owned a car, it's normally aspirated and you modified it with cams, induction kit and remap. You used it for trackdays and sprints etc as well as a daily. Lets say this car is roughly 6 years old.
You now decide that you want to move it along and you trade it in at a garage and you explain it's modified and it has launch control now built in etc.
The garage take it and you get your nice new car. A few days later the garage contact you to say the engine has let go and they want recompense from you or the tuner who fitted the parts.
Is there any obligation to the dealer or is it tough, they took the trade in and it's their risk?
Lets say you owned a car, it's normally aspirated and you modified it with cams, induction kit and remap. You used it for trackdays and sprints etc as well as a daily. Lets say this car is roughly 6 years old.
You now decide that you want to move it along and you trade it in at a garage and you explain it's modified and it has launch control now built in etc.
The garage take it and you get your nice new car. A few days later the garage contact you to say the engine has let go and they want recompense from you or the tuner who fitted the parts.
Is there any obligation to the dealer or is it tough, they took the trade in and it's their risk?
It genuinely isn't me, but a friend who doesn't use forums.
Thanks for the replies, pretty much sums up what I suspected. The trader is threatening small claims court and trading standards etc. They've had an engineers report done that says the engine was badly built by the tuner. I'll tell my friend to tell them to jog on.
Our strong suspicion is they were told of all the fancy features of the custom map and the cams etc, decided to try them out and lunched the engine. My friend had done a lot of trackdays in the car with no problems at all but he'd actually steered away from using the launch control feature because it puts a lot of stress on the drivetrain, although he was more concerned about damaging the gearbox, clutch and LSD.
Thanks for the replies, pretty much sums up what I suspected. The trader is threatening small claims court and trading standards etc. They've had an engineers report done that says the engine was badly built by the tuner. I'll tell my friend to tell them to jog on.
Our strong suspicion is they were told of all the fancy features of the custom map and the cams etc, decided to try them out and lunched the engine. My friend had done a lot of trackdays in the car with no problems at all but he'd actually steered away from using the launch control feature because it puts a lot of stress on the drivetrain, although he was more concerned about damaging the gearbox, clutch and LSD.
f
k 'em. IF the engine was built badly by the tuner, the relationship was between your pal and the tuner. Now that he's got rid of the car, he doesn't have to do anything as he no longer has any interest in it. There's no relationship between the garage and the tuner now so they can do nothing either.
k 'em. IF the engine was built badly by the tuner, the relationship was between your pal and the tuner. Now that he's got rid of the car, he doesn't have to do anything as he no longer has any interest in it. There's no relationship between the garage and the tuner now so they can do nothing either.funny how often this happens to high performance / modified cars. the owners sells and just days later it blows up.
happened to my dad years back, he traded in a mk1 astra gte for a bmw (worst deal he ever did bmw was a money pit).
i bought a nova from the same dealership a few months later, and they complained that his astra had died 10 days after the trade in and cost them a fortune to fix.
it had 65k on with a full vauxhall service record, not a penny pinched.
having seen one of their guys parking a customers car, we can guess what really happened.
happened to my dad years back, he traded in a mk1 astra gte for a bmw (worst deal he ever did bmw was a money pit).
i bought a nova from the same dealership a few months later, and they complained that his astra had died 10 days after the trade in and cost them a fortune to fix.
it had 65k on with a full vauxhall service record, not a penny pinched.
having seen one of their guys parking a customers car, we can guess what really happened.
I once sold a moderately modified (engine/brakes only - no barry bits) car privately.
Saw the cocky little knob end who bought it caning it around town and on A road several times over the next week.... properly revving the nuts off it. He called me to tell me it had blown a head gasket about 2 weeks later.
Funny thing was that he bought my car to replace a Clio 172 which he had rebuilt as he'd blown that up too. I guess he didn't learn that cars will need a rebuild once in a while if you are permanently pinned to the rev limiter :-)
Saw the cocky little knob end who bought it caning it around town and on A road several times over the next week.... properly revving the nuts off it. He called me to tell me it had blown a head gasket about 2 weeks later.
Funny thing was that he bought my car to replace a Clio 172 which he had rebuilt as he'd blown that up too. I guess he didn't learn that cars will need a rebuild once in a while if you are permanently pinned to the rev limiter :-)
HorneyMX5 said:
Go on then, what do you think is missing?
The bit that explains what really happened - don't get me wrong I'm not saying you or your mate are hiding anything and I think xjay above is probably right - someone has ragged the thing senseless, probably the dealer and is now trying to bluff/threaten their way out of it.Out of interest what kind of dealer are we talking about - indy, specialist, backstreet?
Neonblau said:
HorneyMX5 said:
Go on then, what do you think is missing?
The bit that explains what really happened - don't get me wrong I'm not saying you or your mate are hiding anything and I think xjay above is probably right - someone has ragged the thing senseless, probably the dealer and is now trying to bluff/threaten their way out of it.Out of interest what kind of dealer are we talking about - indy, specialist, backstreet?
AFAIK the dealer was a mid level independent. I was actually surprised that they'd excepted a car that had been that modified as a trade in.
HorneyMX5 said:
The trader is threatening small claims court and trading standards etc.
This is the part that intrigues me.....why trading standards? I cant see why a business purchasing a product from an individual would do this.Is your friend in the motor trade? When he completed the V5c, was the car registered to a new keeper or sold to a dealer using section 9?
andburg said:
HorneyMX5 said:
The trader is threatening small claims court and trading standards etc.
This is the part that intrigues me.....why trading standards? I cant see why a business purchasing a product from an individual would do this.Is your friend in the motor trade? When he completed the V5c, was the car registered to a new keeper or sold to a dealer using section 9?
Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff