[BanziBarn]

Hi All,

Seriously considering an Evolve remap

I know dealers can see a remap if they look, but out of those of you who have a remap with an extended BMW warranty, has any of your repair work ever been denied due to the ECU mod?

This is the last thing holding me back really as I don't really trust the reliability on my car and so want my warranty to still pay out! A friend of mine has had all his cars remapped over the years and the dealers have never said anything, but that's just one example.

Cheers !

[themanthatcan]

If you don't trust the reliability of your car then is it really worth pushing it harder with a remap?

[BanziBarn]

Originally Posted by themanthatcan

If you don't trust the reliability of your car then is it really worth pushing it harder with a remap?

It is, but only if the likely hood is that I'll still be covered for a repair if something goes bang.

When I say 'reliability' I don't just mean specifically turbo/gearbox/drive train though, I just mean in general - i.e non descriptive annoying faults.

I've had various issues (all fairly minor) fixed so far, and some other problems which aren't worth paying the £100 excess to fix - but non that a re-map would have any bearing on.

[themanthatcan]

Ah ok fair enough. I was in a similar position to you and decided to stump up for a Cobb AccessPort v2, BCI cone inktakes and installed the Alpina flashed to the gearbox. As much as I loved how quick the car was, I always had that niggling concern about how it might affect my warranty.

I then had an issue where my water pump failed while I was down in Newquay and rather than get it delivered straight to the dealership I ended up having to get it towed to work so I could remove the DCIs, Cobb and Alpina flash before it went into the dealer.

At that point I decided I couldn't be bothered with all that hassle again so removed the whole lot. I'm still always a bit concerned that there may be traces of the Cobb left in the system, but just have to hope that nothing drastic ever happens which would require BMW to dig around in my ECU.

I've decided to keep all my mods to genuine BMW parts only now

[Ao1]

I asked my local BMW garage this question. They said that around 10% of cars that come in have been modified or remapped in some way and they can invariably tell. They said that in general if the mod has nothing to do with the warranty claim it is not a problem. That said however I know that BMW Germany can connect and read data from a car in the event of a warranty claim and they can dictate to the dealer what is or is not done under warranty based on what they can see.


My warranty recently came up for renewal and I decided not to proceed with it as I have done a lot of mods and I am intending to remap very soon. Losing the warranty in my case was a calculated risk against the benefit of remapping and moding the car. It is something that needs to be factored into the cost of going down that route. No doubt I will be stung on the insurance as well but that is another story.

p.s. someone (from the insurance industry) once gave me this adage: "Insurance is like giving someone an umbrella, but then asking for it back once it starts to rain".

[BanziBarn]

Thanks for your replies guys. Interesting. I like the brolly analogy.

I'm not planning to do any mods which are visible to the eye so it's all about whether they'd see/make a fuss of a software mod.

I've no doubt that they can see a remap if they look, and may not even need to specifically look these days if it's standard for it to be flagged up as soon as they connect their diagnostics. So really it's about whether this is indeed the case, and if so, how often they'd make an issue out of it.

Moreover, if their system does flag it up without them even trying, will they use this as an excuse not to pay out on anything, even if the fault is not connected to something which could be damaged by a remap? Ao1, from what you say, that specific dealer would probably be ok about it.

In a way I'm a bit surprised that the mappers haven't worked out a way to mask their maps as BMW OEM, but then again I'm not a programmer so I'm sure it's much harder to do than say!