Monday 16th December 2002

Warranty Revision for Noble

Track day anomoly to be removed from Noble warranty

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Noble has written to its customers clarifying an issue with the warranty onits M12. Although produced very much with the track day enthusiast in mind,small print in the warranty for the car actually excluded track days. Noble arenow clarifying the confusion by modifying the warranty to include track days -subject to following their guidelines for preparation and participation in trackdays.

It's come at a time when Ford have modified the sump on the V6 enginessupplied to Noble. Baffles have now been included in the sump to prevent oilsurge under extreme cornering forces.

Noble are now fitting the new sumps to production cars and are working withexisting owners to retro-fit them as a precaution for those doing track days.One of the warranty conditions will be that the sump is fitted prior to anyfuture track days.

[LRdriver]

Yippeee!!
Sanity prevails at last!!
sign me up for one

[getcarter]

BTW - they are charging £500 for the fit to existing cars (I guess that's pretty cheap)... but why on earth wasn't it std?!

[PetrolTed]

It's my understanding that the baffled sump is a new part from Ford. Ford haven't said why the new engines are coming with baffled sumps but the implication is obviously that they found a problem and this is the solution.

[joust]

There is no confirmed price that I know of for the upgrade. New 3.0l engines from Ford have them as standard in the US (I don't know when Ford changed the part) - but I'm not sure where Lee get's his engines from and so don't know how quickly they will get onto the new cars (they may already be on them for all I know). AFAIK 2.5l from Ford never had the modification done to them.

Interestingly although Ford themselves have changed the sump - they totally deny there is any reason why the change has been done. Without therefore Ford admitting there is a problem, it seems really top class that Noble have taken the iniative and said that for track use the upgrade is needed.

Some of the after market ones I've seen range from $125 to £400 so I have no idea how much (if anything) the retro fit will cost.... but I would imagine a Ford garage would want to charge you the cost of the part, the new oil, and something for labour to fit it to your Cougar/Mondeo V6 if you wanted it "upgraded".

Lee's letter to owners said that they were testing various configurations (I presume that the standard Ford version is one of them, the aftermarket ones the others) - he didn't say how long that testing would take.

I presume that some owners won't ever take their cars onto the track so they don't need to worry about anything, and all new customers will get it standard on the new Ford 3.0l.

Me - I'm hoping that it's ready for the 10th when mine goes back to Mole Valley for it's next service so I can get it all done at the same time!!!!

J