As someone who has been employed by an OEM and currently by a Tier
1/Tier 2 supplier to the OEMs, and someone who's spent a fair bit of
time doing warranty claims analysis as a part of that job, I find all
this paranoid talk about warranties being voided because so-and-so's
name appeared on an SCCA entry list somewhere on the web quite amusing.
One of the programs I worked on was a performance model that got a lot
of owners adding aftermarket goodies, taking it to the drags, etc.
This particular vehicle had certain engine internals that didn't react
well to dramatically increased cylinder pressure, such as you might
get from supercharging or adding nitrous. Certain failures were
almost certainly the direct result of certain additions and/or
activities. Look a little closer, and there would be the physical
evidence -- bolts with tool marks, threaded holes that were unused
showed evidence of having had something attached there, witness marks
from N20 bottle holddowns in the trunk, a microswitch on the throttle
linkage, the lacquer removed from the ECU's diagnostic port contacts
and the dust cover over the port bent or just plain missing, different
kinds/colors of RTV in certain locations, that sort of thing.
Sometimes, they just brought it in with the stuff still on it.
Sometimes, they still had their dial-in on the window, or a tech
sticker, or rubber crumbs on the rear fascia aft of the wheels.
Mitsu has already come out and point blank said they aren't
web-crawling looking for customers to refuse warranty claims on. I
sincerely doubt Honda is doing that, either. It's not productive.
Even if you feed in a list of customer names and a list of "racing"
style websites, and have the computer do it, you're going to get a lot
of irrelevant data. Running my name through Google yields up a doctor
in Washington State who used to keep a blog and has marital fidelity
issues, a high school wrestler in Iowa, a guy with a couple of really
cool early Ford hot rods for sale, a WWII/Korean Air Corps/Air Force
veteran, and an assortment of listings for little ol' me (including a
number of old team.net posts of mine on technical topics that have
been posted on other sites without my permission, but that's another
issue entirely). Someone would have to sort through all that data and
pick out the relevant stuff, discard the rest, and then confirm that
the "relevant" stuff really *IS* that person, running that vehicle,
before they could do anything.
More than likely, the unfortunate couple with the S2000 had a Tire
Rack windshield banner or a tech sticker, or some sort of SCCA
insignia on the car -- or even just wore their Regional Champion
jacket to the dealership -- and someone at the dealership (who is an
independent franchisee, NOT an employee of the OEM) decided to play
bad cop with them. Maybe someone noticed the shocks or aftermarket
front swaybar and asked about them, getting a "oh, they work better
when autocrossing than the stock ones do". That said, I can't see
autocross damaging a 6th-gear synchro, for crying out loud. If they
were running Road America, well, that's another barrel of anacondas.
If they're Club Racers and left the cage, driver's seat, removed
airbags, etc. in it when they brought it back to the dealer, well,
game over. If they're autocrossers with a big Hoosier decal on the
nose, but no other obvious evidence, someone at the dealer is playing
mindf*** games with them. I quite sincerely doubt Honda is doing web
searches. They (and other OEMs) don't have to: the folks who break
their cars playing with them in a non-road-use setting leave plenty of
physical tracks on the car itself.
There are no black helicopters hovering over Mitsubishi, Subaru, or
Honda dealerships. At the same time, though, if you're gonna play,
you'd best be prepared to pay. Warranty fraud isn't often prosecuted,
but can get into felony levels mighty fast at today's prices.
Again, all that said, I don't think autocross puts any great
additional stress on the car that wouldn't be there in normal road
use, particularly on Michigan roads. What stresses there are are
fairly short-duration. Autocrossers also do a lot better job of
keeping up on the PM of their rides than most. But if it's altered
from stock, be prepared to write a check to fix it if it breaks. To
what degree you can alter it before it becomes an issue depends a lot
on the dealership and your relationship with the service manager.
Jim Crider
autojim@despammed.com
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