Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe-BMW33
Fortunately, there really isn't a great sample of your scenario and may not be one at all. The reality is that our engines are very reliable from a catastrophic failure perspective. It just doesn't happen much if at all while under warranty. The piggy backs are so mild that there is no way they are going to be the cause of an engine replacement. I'd argue that even the custom, BM3's etc ECU aggressive tunes aren't pushing the N63TU2/3 over the edge. Will they shorten the life from say 200k mikes to 150k miles? Impossible to tell at the moment and none of us will have our cars to compile data anyway.
But I hear what you are asking. Could they find piggyback evidence while under warranty and use it against you in the event of an engine failure? It's my understanding that nothing is logged with the Dinan. All the parameters are tweaked post ECU instructions.
For what it's worth, I've taken my car to the dealer 3-4 times for warranty work. I've never removed the V2 piggyback. If I lost oil pressure and broke down, I'd have it towed to my Dinan shop, they would remove the V2 and then a tow to the dealer. But I would have to highly suspect my engine was gone. Something like replacing turbo coolant lines a few months ago where I knew they would have their heads in my engine, nope, and it's not like they noted it on my account.
As I mentioned, I was someone who chose Dinan because of the warranty a year ago and if I did it again, I don't think I'd be as paranoid about going with something else, even a custom ECU flash.
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I know you've done all the homework so interested to get your reaction to this. The shop I talked to about the exhaust is a BMW only shop. He was a Dinan dealer at one point, but gave it up because the market here just isn't big enough to consistently support it. His opinion was that he wouldn't use a piggyback. He said on his own cars he would do (and I'm blanking on correct lingo here) a regular tune where they actually make changes is the computer. He was adamant that if done right it would not contribute to problems or an engine failure. He was totally up front about it's getting flagged at the dealer. He said the dealer will be cool about little things but a catastrophic failure would definitely be a denied claim. He basically said the tune isn't going to cause the damage, but if a freak thing happened, the tune would screw the warranty regardless.
If Dinan warranty matched with the CPO, I think I would do the Dinan stage 1 tune this year. Since they don't, and my factory warranty is up this fall, I'm leaning toward doing the axle back exhaust this year and reevaluating the tune and how much longer I'll have the car next year.