So i have a friend that purchased a new 14' wrx in September. He is looking to mildly modify it and I suggested to get the cobb stage 2+ kit. Basically for power adders its... Turboback exhaust Short ram Intake Accessport v3 I am under the assumption that as it pertains to your warranty there pretty lenient to basic bolt-ons unless the dealer can prove that your add ons have caused the damage. Am I correct of this assumption? Also as far as the cobb tune on the ecu you can flash the factory data back. Is it traceable to see if it has been changed or tampered with? I know, I know there's probably 20 other threads nationally and on here about these questions but I wanted to talk ask our local guys and the few Minnetonka subaru guys here and get there input for him. Any input or information is greatly appreciated! Derek or Tony @nf, you should be getting that call from him here anytime soon to get that ordered up! John
you can trace it every time you flash but you should be safe if you flash it back to the stock settings. Some dealers will work with you if your up front with everything, but SOA it is not the same story. Drive it as is or play the mod game???
There are a lot of factors involved for each dealership and sometimes for the individual looking at your car. It can certainly be a gamble.
I lucked out when it came to bringing mine in for maintenance too. He was like im looking the other way on the mods at the moment, but if you keep having troubles youll have to revert to stock for a little while.
I'm on the same debate between my 13'FXT. I bought the car used at 6k miles and added the 100k bumper to bumper warrenty along with lifetime powertrain warrenty. Not sure how good the plan is. This is from a Luther dealership
Skip all that and install a manual boost controller. No flashing required and easy to remove so the dealer won't know when the engine pops.
It's dealer dependent, but your friend will likely be SOL when (not if) the pistons let go. They're going to look for reasons, and running higher power levels than stock and then having an engine failure is going to be enough for 99% of them to say "Nope". Dealerships aren't looking at a turboback and a reflash as "basic bolt ons". Yes, the ECU will show if it's been reflashed.
White Bear Subaru has done some warranty work on my car with the car being on stage 2 without any problems. I don't have any problems with them.
IMHO if you add power mods you should budget for and expect the worst (i.e. paying for engine damage out of pocket if/when it happens). That's not saying Subaru will automatically not perform warranty work if you have mods but you should tell your friend he should be ready for that outcome if it comes to that. If he is not prepared to take that responsibility then he probably shouldn't take the risk of modifying his car while under warranty. Why does he want more power and what are his eventual goals for the car? DD? Weekend autox? Does he just want more power for the hell of it? The new wrx's are pretty fast out of the box and if he is an average driver he probably can't handle the car at 10/10 even in stock form. It is fine if he just wants more power for the hell of it (that was pretty much my reason) but as everyone says, "you gotta pay to play."
I can say my Subaru dealer in WI at first said not to do anything to my car. I bought it with the extended warranty. Then when i went in to cancel the warranty they said I don't need to do that. They said to just make sure to reflash it to stock and turn the key 10 times and it won't show to them. This is what they told me at the dealer. not sure how true it is i canceled my warranty anyway...once you go stage 2 and your like me you can't help but keep going deeper and deeper.
How I see that dealership is that they want your money. If you cancel your warranty, they obviously just lost a sale, possibily commission.
One of my diff was bad making a ton of noise, they replaced it under warranty and passenger rear hub bearing also placed under warranty. both got a free car rental out of it since my work site was too far for them to drop me off. All the service guys that I have dealt with are pretty laid back. Also, all my oil changes were done by them. I'm just too lazy to do them myself.
