Warranty with aftermarket intercooler

[Don N]

What is everyone's experience with an aftermarket intercooler and getting warranty work done.

If you take your truck in for a non engine relate warranty, say interior upholstery issue, will they see the intercooler and note it down?

I am sure it's going to be very dealer depending, but just looking to see what everyone's mixed experiences have been.

 

[brian.schacht.1]

Following. Also curious what dealers are cool in the Houston market.

 

[Muchmore]

This is no joke. I took my truck in for the cam phaser which requires separating the cab from the frame. I forgot something in my truck I needed so I went up there to get it and when we walked back to me my truck the tech apologized and told me one of the plugs on my light harness had pulled off when it got caught behind something as he was lifting the cab. He had repaired it and it was cool, I joked I thought you were going to say something about my intercooler, to which he replied, "what intercooler" No joke.

It's an SVC in the factory location and he didn't even notice it!

 

[Don N]

This is no joke. I took my truck in for the cam phaser which requires separating the cab from the frame. I forgot something in my truck I needed so I went up there to get it and when we walked back to me my truck the tech apologized and told me one of the plugs on my light harness had pulled off when it got caught behind something as he was lifting the cab. He had repaired it and it was cool, I joked I thought you were going to say something about my intercooler, to which he replied, "what intercooler" No joke.

It's an SVC in the factory location and he didn't even notice it!

If only all techs were like that, but then it makes you think if he missed the intercooler, what else could he be missing when he does the other repairs on your truck haha. Is the factory location SVC intercooler the same size as the one that gets relocated behind the grill?

 

[Muchmore]

Is the factory location SVC intercooler the same size as the one that gets relocated behind the grill?

Heck no it's gigantic! It just made me realize that not all techs are looking for reasons to deny claims but I bet if it was a turbo problem it would have been an issue.

 

[Attackpilot]

Well I had my turbo blow on my 18. I have the stage 2 Cobb FMIC. They replaced it no questions asked about the AMS pipes, Cobb CAI and FMIC.

 

[Raptorrunner2019]

It is really hard to notice a factory intercooler replacement. It is covered and out of sight. If they are doing anything short of needing to get to something around the intercooler they probably won’t notice. Most techs are not sniping our trucks looking for reasons to void warranty. They are cool guys that just happen to work on vehicles for a living. Intercooler will likely be a nonissue, unless it caused the problem... like not tightening down the pipe boot enough... ask me how I know, fortunately I knew as soon as the boom and lost boost pressure what happened immediately after install on test run. 20 minutes later no further problems.

 

[Proflyer]

I have a stage 1 whipple and just had my phasers done. They didn't care one bit. When it comes to warranty claims, it'll be dependent on what is needing repair. If you have two smoked turbos or dead injectors and have a hot tune, they could try to say the tune caused the issue. They'd have to prove that, and that's where the fight would start, but if injectors are known to fail and kill turbos, you'd have a basis for saying it's a known issue and would have happened either way. If you had a tranny tune which bumped up all the line pressures and you smoked a tranny, you'd probably have a hard time getting that covered.

All of that being said, it's well documented that the tunes for these trucks (and everything, really) is 'safe' and well tested before it's released. If you're pushing limits and hopping a truck up big time, and have something fail due to that, you're going to have a fight on your hands to get it covered.

 

[isis]

Yeah it’s not like you’re going in for a broken valvespring on an aftermarket cam. I mean a tune is gonna spin the turbo faster usually but it isn’t gonna blow an oil seal because of it. But if you blow a crank bearing and have plenty of oil you bet they will check your ECU. An intercooler is such a passive component I really doubt they’d go near it to check anything unless you fried rings or valves. Or have a boost leak obviously

 

[isldtime]

When I worked at a GM dealer we would some times get a call from from the zone rep. to refuse wty. service to a VIN.
This was after the CTS-V came out . Amazing car!!