Gadgetory

we start with the Magnusson Moss Warranty Act of 1975 it basically says you have freedom to choose where your car is worked on and what brands of parts materials and fluids are used this applies to aftermarket parts parts that improve performance and remanufactured parts now beyond repairs you're also free to get your routine maintenance done anywhere as long as it follows factory intervals and with substantially equivalent parts materials and fluids now the gotchas if the repair is done poorly using lousy parts are incorrect fluids you can be denied warranty service on that part of the vehicle and any other parts of the car that might be damaged downstream the onus is on the factory and/or dealer to prove that your non dealer repair caused an issue the dealer can charge you diagnostic fees while they dig into your car to prove that your non dealer repairs caused a problem and when the factory is providing free service like during a recall they can direct which shop does that work now quick reality check if you show up at the dealer all of a sudden one day out of the clear blue asking for a pricey warranty repair and you've never been there for maintenance be sure you're carrying with you a tidy thick meticulous folder of receipts and procedures they're gonna deny you like Steve Jobs daughter also another today dealer service records are typically stored on networks that all the dealerships of that brand have access to next up is CPE coverage this is customer provided equipment things like running boards custom tire wheel combos trick suspension or exhaust upgraded audio gear even a custom paint job all this can fall under CPE now you likely have a base level of coverage for this kind of gear in your policy perhaps $1,000 or so under comp and under collision which by the way covers permanently installed equipment not your smartphone claimed as a nav system because you use it that way once in a while in the car custom equipment that is dealer installed is probably covered under your normal limits not CPE you may want to add additional CPE coverage to have your add-ons fully covered most insurance companies are happy to sell that to you but of course and an additional premium cost then there's the DMCA and your car this is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act goes back to 1998 it's a wide-ranging piece of legislation that isn't really about cars but it does apply to vehicles in that they have electronics that contain software and that is proprietary intellectual property of the car maker a typical bone of contention would be when someone chips their car with new powertrain management firmware to get more power out of it that may also increase emissions of which sent owner may avoid detection by flashing the car back to the factory setting temporarily when they go to get a smog test now the latest move in this area came in November 2015 when the US Copyright Office declared that it is legal under DMCA to modify the code in your car so long as it doesn't do so in a way that increases emission this is roughly analogous to earlier rulings that made it legal to jailbreak your phone so it could be used on other carriers than the one you bought it from however there could be a Magnuson Maus intersection here if you mod your car and that causes damage say sending too much power to the transmission that could put you out of warranty even though it was legal under DMCA to make the changes in the first place and don't take for granted that the dealers diagnostic gear is going to be fooled if you flashed your car in a way that damaged it and then flashed it back thinking you left no trace I've just given you a lot of ammo to defend your cars warranty but here are some ways to end up out of pocket real fast some warranty killers buy a salvage title or totaled car that includes one that has flood records so before you buy used title search three ways a commercial venture site the government's nm vti-s sites and the NI CV title check site run by the insurance industry racing even vehicles that are shown tearing around a track in TV commercials are not covered if you do that there are even apocryphal tales of dealers monitoring auto cross Club websites to record license-plate numbers for future warranty denial tampering with the odometer a huge no-no if the factory or dealer can't be confident of the cars mileage they have no way to know if you're in warranty or not and all bets are off plus you've just broken state law so the dealer is gonna feel pretty good about telling you to lump it and take it up with the DA if you're unhappy and as we mentioned earlier aftermarket parts if they are shown by the factory or dealer to have screwed up some partier car in the end it comes down to a fairly simple set of rules take care of your car document that you've done so and don't let maintenance slide deferred maintenance scans to create a rat's nest of layered problems in your vehicle which can make it harder for all parties to figure out who's on the hook to fix what because it's not so easy to figure out where one pump bands and the next one begins more car tech demystified right now at SEMA on cars comm click on car tech 101