Letter from Ford

[Guest FatBAt]

Manufactures have to comply to fix any faults or parts of a motor vehicle that are warranted even if the car has been modified.

Your dealer has to conform to legislative guidelines. End of story. They are not a law unto themselves.

By modifying a vehicle, dealers do not have the power to absolve themselves from all legal responsibilities.

As per Part 4 Subsection 28 of the Motor Dealers Act 1974 these (among others) will void warranty only to those parts effected by the altered part.

Item 1C arising from misuse or negligence on the part of a driver of a motor vehicle, or arising from the use of a motor vehicle for motor racing or motor rallying, that occurred after the sale, referred to in section 27 (1), of the vehicle.

Just because you chip your car to 400kw does not absolve manufactures from fixing warrantable parts. Except if you blow up a gearbox and you are towed away from 2x50 metres of rubber.

Item 1D appearing or occurring in an accessory that was not fitted to or supplied with a motor vehicle at the time of the sale, referred to in section 27 (1), of the vehicle.

The key words in that paragraph are "appearing or occurring in an accessory". In otherwords...only those parts that were fitted afterwards are not warranted, not the whole car.

If there is something legitimately wrong with your car they have to fix it. Quote the Act to them and get legal advice.

An interesting (Ford) link...

http://www.ford.com.au/inside_ford/faq/Ser..._Warranty.asp#7

I hope this helps.....

[Falchoon]

That's all very well and good quoting Acts and other legal stuff but if push comes to shove the vehicle manufacturer can refuse warranty work and can afford much fancier legal representation than most individuals can to fight it out in court. There was a thread over at ls1.com.au recently about some guy who had a lot of warranty problems with his HSV and there had already been a ruling by Office of Fair Trading's Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal in favour of Andrew Eagleston and against the car he regards as a lemon, it ordered that Heartland Expensive Daewoo take back his car and refund him $65,000. Expensive Daewoo appealed it and it is now in the Supreme Court.

There is no mention of modifications involved.

Also, your interpretation or your legal representive's interpretation of these Acts or laws can be quite different from the vehicle dealer/manufacturers or their legal representives view.

I think Saleen has summed it up well with his post on the subject.

[JB]

Understand what you are saying Fatbat but falchoon is right.

I persued legal advice and their first comment to me was,'it does not matter if you are right and there is a fault, Ford are known to fight tooth and nail to the point where their directive is to exhaust you of all your resource and money until a point that you give up. They will do everything to abstain themselves from liability which inturn protects their brand and also restricts anyone else from doing the same thing if you won'.

They told me they had just won against Ford for a law suit, however the process took 18 months, massive amounts of $$ more heartache, pain than the whole thing was worth. If you want to do it on pricipal then yes, if you do not have the time, money, resource and alot of patience then forget it. They idicated that Ford tried every trick in the book, at the end of the day they do not care, they want to ruin anyone that goes up against them.

Pretty honest opinions were discussed, so at the end of the day I believe them as why would they talk themselves out of a possible client?

At the end of the day it's a car, and it's not worth that sort of thing in your life. Ford will loose in the long run, I will enjoy my T mod the hell out of it, then next time let my money and my friends and families money, talk somewhere else.

[poida97]

I persued legal advice and their first comment to me was,'it does not matter if you are right and there is a fault, Ford are known to fight tooth and nail to the point where their directive is to exhaust you of all your resource and money until a point that you give up. They will do everything to abstain themselves from liability which inturn protects their brand and also restricts anyone else from doing the same thing if you won'.

They told me they had just won against Ford for a law suit, however the process took 18 months, massive amounts of $$ more heartache, pain than the whole thing was worth. If you want to do it on pricipal then yes, if you do not have the time, money, resource and alot of patience then forget it. They idicated that Ford tried every trick in the book, at the end of the day they do not care, they want to ruin anyone that goes up against them.

... which is exactly why you can put me down for a sticker too.

Mine is a Nov '02 T as well. Diff clunk, random engine stalling, etc etc etc...

[Guest FatBAt]

That's all very well and good quoting Acts..............

Point taken. It just makes me angry that they can get away with it. Even when it is written in black and white specifically in an Act.

AND

they say that they will warrant your car even if it is modded as per their own web site.

All said and done...I still love the bloody thing .

[turb06]

My T is on radiator no. 2 already.

I'm in the process of writing a "please explain" letter to Ford but based on this thread I think I can guess what the reply will be.

Same here, I had a replacement radiator put in 35 minutes after it left the dealership.

Dazza.

[turb06]

That's all very well and good quoting Acts..............

Point taken. It just makes me angry that they can get away with it. Even when it is written in black and white specifically in an Act.

AND

they say that they will warrant your car even if it is modded as per their own web site.

All said and done...I still love the bloody thing .

fatbat - what it says on the website is exactly what ford dealers have been telling us all along, and what I think is fair, they will warrant your car if it is modified, yet they wont warrant the modified non ford part, or any ford part that is damaged becasue of the modification, which is fair, I wouldnt want to have a 700hp T rock up at my dealership if I owned one saying he has a broken diff and wants it replaced under warranty, I would be pretty skeptical too.

The only thing I would have a problem with is if they said they wont replace my diff becasue I have a non standard air filter and exhaust system on the car.

Dazza.

[twinxrs]

I've had recurring problems with my car for some time - after many trips back to the dealer(s) I decided that they didn't have the technical expertise to fix the car and went to an independent workshop and paid for the fixes !

It should never have come to this, but if I had left it to Ford, it would never have been fixed.

I had the car booked in for a replacement diff (not clunking, just the whine), and the Ford CRC admitted that the replacement would probably be worse than the current one !

(The CRC even called the dealership on my behalf to cancel the order !)

It's going to be a long time before a Ford dealership sees my car again !

[turb06]

Did you take some sort of evaluation done by the third party that fixed your diff and get them to give you a please explain on how come they could fix it and ford couldnt?

How much did it cost you to fix?

Dazza.

[X-WING]

Holy sh*t hey Mal, you're on "the list."

Scotty

Isn't Al Capone on that list