Agreed. The photographic evidence is definitely not SOP. We knew it would come to this eventually because some dealers are more mod friendly than others, allowing some modified cars to fall through the warranty crack. The way to solve that problem is remove the decision making ability from the dealers. Sure dealers can still "warranty" repair items for you however they will not be reimbursed from Mitsubishi. All manufacturers have this type of BS warranty discretion bulletin; I work for Audi/VW and we have same thing, but for us the discretion is still left in the technicians hands so a lot of modified cars are still covered under warranty (due to the problem not being related to the modification). It will be interesting to see what the mod friendly dealers do now, although it's pretty much out of their hands. Mitsu might as well quit including warranties on the evo's to begin with, could save them a lot of money

 

It was actually the "reflash check" that caught my attention, since there has been a lot of speculation about whether or not there is a flash counter. In reality, it would be silly for Mitsu not to have a flash counter, since it is not that hard to do and they obviously know that a significant percentage of the target audience for the Evo is going to modify it. As long as they don't try to deny a warranty claim on something completely unrelated (like audio, headlights, etc) then I won't have an issue with it.

 

+1 The required reflash check is what caught my eye. Anyone know if they will do a checksum of the data, or have an actual counter? It probably won't be long before we hear of someone's warranty claim being denied due to reflash. Up to this point, it's all been speculation as to whether the dealer typically checks for reflashes, and I believe there hasn't been a documented case where warranty was denied solely due to reflash on a completely stock car.

 

The "reflash check" has already been happening long before this letter. There are actually a couple members of this forum with known warranty denial due to a tune...even thought they tried to flash back to stock.

 

I think if there is some kind of flash counter and they deny your warranty they should be required to disclose how many flashes they found inorder to keep them out of court. We do have a state attorney general that works in the interest of the public against situations like this.

 

Do you have any links to posts with denials due to reflash on an evo x? I'd like to get more info if possible.

I've only heard of denials after the owner admitting there was a reflash. Haven't heard of a "reflashed back to stock" evo x getting warranty denied. Last I heard, Cobb claimed there was no way to tell it had been reflashed back to stock. Thanks!

 

Not too surprising. Bad economy, people modding their cars and expecting the manufacturer to pay for mistakes, failures, etc. Mitsu's just doing what they can to keep money in their pockets. Like someone said earlier, if you can't pay for the repair, don't mod the car.

 

There is one specific instance in my head. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Essentially, the owner of the Evo X had a major engine failure (he has a pretty decent number of mods). He returned the car completely to stock. And had his tuner change his tune back to a stock tune. The problem is that the incorrect stock tune was put back on his car (there are several different stock tunes available with all the different reflashes Mitsu released). The stock tune on his ECU didn't match the one listed in the Mitsu computer that should have been on his car. Bam, he got nailed.

As far as a flash counter, I don't know if anyone has 100% confirmed that one does/doesn't exist. The prevailing theory is that one does not exist.

 

Oh thanks for reminding me! I remember that case - it seemed that the wrong ecu id was reflashed back.

So the question I would have is, can the dealer only check the ecu id, or is there a way to compare every byte of data (possibly through a checksum), or is there a flash counter? It would seem that a car properly flashed back to stock could only be detected as reflashed at some point in time if a flash counter really did exist.

 

Yeah but that was a ROM not matching up, which was botched on the tuners end...

An AP would always go back to the same tune it started with, so that wouldn't happen...

Only way they would be able to tell would be some sort of check-sum/counter...

 

True. But that still leads to the fact that dealerships have been doing ECU checks for quite some time. That incident happened 6-7 months ago.

As far as a check-sum or counter, like I mentioned above, nobody has been able to prove, without a doubt, 100% that a counter does/doesn't exist. I don't know of any specific case that would prove/deny that one does/doesn't exist.

And, if one doesn't exist for the 2008 model. Nobody knows what (if anything) Mitsu added to the 2010 ECU.

 

Yeah, that's what I was saying...

Someone asked about the AP being a problem, but the case you gave would not be applicable to AP users just open source people...

So I think we are on the same page...

 

Cobb came out stating that there was 100% NO COUNTER on the ecu.

And the incident where the service was denied, I believe the the owner admitted there was a tune after them confronting him with the incorrect rom ID.

 

The incident people are thinking of came about because the tuning shop reflashed the car with a general stock map they had in their system, but not that cars original stock map, so mitsu was able to show that the ECU had been altered.

The AP will put the cars original stock map back when it is unmarried, which will eliminate the particular risk people are referencing here.

 

according to kijima, the mitsu MUT-III cannot detect the "flash count". it can only detect the rom id.

SO... does anybody know if dealers have other tools that CAN detect a "flash count"?

reference thread (discussed on this page and the next): https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/mi...ml#post7615681

so my ultimate question is if dealers have these "other tools" that can detect flashes...