yes, but fighting a warranty denial claim can often times be more costly than paying to fix the part(s) that broke...so while it may not be legal for Mits to void or limit your warranty, they really have nothing to lose in doing so...if you file a suit against them and you win, they really havent lost anything

 

Except that if you sue in a civil court, you can sue for punitive dammages. Meaning, they would give you money for the fix, plus the cost of an attorney, and a fair amount of reward for wasting your time. If mitsu loses in a civil judgement (which they prolly wont) than they will lose a decent amount of money.

 

Suing is all well and good if you know (within reasonable doubt) that you will win.

For example, if you have a TBE and MBC (or even just an ECU reflash) and your sunroof stops working.....there's no way they can deny that repair. However, with the same mods and then something goes wrong with your engine or drivetrain they probably will (justifiably) deny the claim. I think that's the reality of the situation and you would probably lose in Court on the latter scenario.

 

but this will make some small dealers just give in..

 

Im willing to bet they could come up with an excuse for the sunroof and have a chance at pulling it off as well.

 

A lot of you guys are *****ing left and right about mitsubishi voiding warrantee claims because of modifications to the car. You are stating that the claim should not be discarded because the modification didn't cause the problem. Well just for the record, I have a completely stock EVO, and guess what I've never had a single problem with it. I drive the car with reasonable care. I don't rev the engine up to 5k and dump the clutch. In fact I've never launched the car hard from a dead stop. I don't run to a stop light at 40 mph, and then stomp on the brakes at the last second just because they're Brembos. I Sure as hell don't take it to a race track and try to show off how fast I can run a 1/4 mile in. Sure I do occasionally give it hard acceleration to red line on the freeway when I'm passing cars, but for the most part I just treat it with care and respect. So for all you guys that either abuse or modify the car in some way, you may want to consider the fact that some of us with stock cars that don't abuse them don't have anty problems with the car.
When companies design cars like this they spend many hours of research and development to engineer the cars to certian specifications. When ever you modify the car or abuse it, you are taking the risk of exceeding the "engineered" specifications of the car and causing some part to fail. The could come from even the simplest thing like installing an aftermarket guage or turbo timer or even a stereo. I'm not saying it will definately cause something to fail, but you are taking some amount of risk.
If an aftermarket company does not have a seal of approval from Mitsubishi on the parts they sell, then don't expect them to be "safe" to use on your car. Aftermarket companies don't know what Mitsubishi engineers know about the tollerances of the car.
If you are into modding your car and racing, more power to you, I'm sure many people find it a satisfying hobby. However, any person who does that kind of thing on a regular basis would surely understand the risks they are taking in terms of wear and tear on their car, and not expect someone else to pay for the damage they do to it.

 

That's one of THE most sensible/truthful posts I've ever read here regarding mods & warranties and why "we're" in such a bad predicament with MMNA.

 

well i guess u dont need to post under this section then, because we the people who bought our car being advertise that it will do 0to60 in 5.0secs not that it is a 4 door sedan for your family to drive to the beach, in my personal opinion mitsu is denying our warr because the build a ****ty transmission and cant hold up to recalling every trans that tears up. If u think that by putting a full three inch exhaust and intake on my nearly stock evo and it tears fifth gear synchros out of two trans then i guess car and driver is doing something different to their STOCK CAR!

the reason that were in a bad predicament is that mitsu had the wrong company to build the trannys for the car that suppose to be one of the best backed cars out their anyways

 

First off Mitsubishi does not tell us (customers) the car can accelerate from 0 60 in 5.0 seconds reliably and never break down. Acceleration figures usually come from the auto mags, not the manufacturer. Secondly like I said if you are launching your car to make those kind of numbers you are putting a hell of a lot of stress on your transmission and drive trian, so it's no wonder you are having problems with it. If you do it once or twice you might get away with it just fine, but if you are doing it regularly you are guaranteed to break something eventually.

 

some good points here but also mitsubishi usually provides the car and sometimes the driver for those car magazines tests- though i think mitsubishi should be more leanant on modding or at least offer us ralliart parts or even allow us to put things like the JDM MR diverter valve without giving us crap about it- make some overpriced mistubishi aftermarket parts and charge their $75/hour installation fee and keep our warranty - would be a win win situation for mitsu- only reason my car is stock is cause i get the free maitenance with my warranty and I'm trying to keep that- but also recently found a mod friendly dealership wish is now win win situation for me and a loss for mitsu- i havnt had a problem yet and my cars stock but i can tell you plenty of people that dont kill their stock cars everyday and still have problems and dealerships point out things like excessive wear on tires to try and void warrantys- i just wish mitsubishi would show some loyalty to their customers who are so loyal to them (their cars)
btw great find and mods please sticky!

 

Hmmm...anyone here seen the "0-60 in 4.6 seconds" ad? I'm not sure if you understand this, Horinay, but Mitsubishi advertises hard driving as one of the uses for the car, the same with modification. I believe the 2004 Evo catalog had modified cars in it? One could argue that the catalog is there to give the buyer an idea of what the product is used for, and that modification is one of them. Remember Mazda's RX-7 ads where they were going all fast and whatnot? Remember how they had to cover racing related stuff because of that? Don't think it's fair and say, "tough ****." Someone will fight back, and you will reap the benefits, go figure

 

Dude, my car is bone stock as well. I dont beat the crap out of it, never race it, never launch, and have never braked harder than anything that couldnt be done in a ford model T.

Im not worried about people getting warranty work denied on their tranny when they have 400whp pumping through or track their car 20 times a year. Im worried about people not getting warranty coverage for peeling brembos when brembo themselves claim it is a mitsu facoty defect. Im worried about not getting a new paint job if my car ever rusts. Im worried about people not getting wheel bearings replaced becasue they have a tiny dent in the wheel. Im worried about people not getting their AC fixed becasue they have a boost gauge.

These are the things I get mad about it. And persoanlly I could care less if mitsu thinks they are being shafted by people who take off their mods and come in for warranty. That doesnt negate the fact that things break that are not the fault of minor accessories and that the broken part should be covered by mitsu. If they cant handle the warranty, they shouldnt have brought the car to the USA in the first place.

 

The funny thing is, is that the Evo is sold "worldwide". Now, I honestly can't attest to the warranty situations everywhere, but at least in the UK (where Evos have been sold for 13 years) there doesn't appear to be this ongoing confrontational situation between consumer and manufacturer over warranty claims. Are the USDM Evos less well built than those sold elsewhere in the world....hmmmm, aren't they all built at the same plant in Japan ?

 

MMNA is a sub company of MM. They have their own ceo, etc and can prettymuch choose how to run operations over here, with some guidelines from mitsu in japan. Im willing to bet the confrontations are caused by MMNA having a warranty policy that is more strict than the overseas divisions as well as other domestic and japanese car manufacturers.