The warranty was a significant motivating factor in why I went with Champion.

Yes i'm sure some Porsche dealers do install and support mods. I know my local Mercedes dealer does with my Renntech mods to my E63 S. Those mods are deliberately limited to a tune and mufflers due to my warranty concerns.

But at the end of the day, if there is a major mechanical failure requiring a expensive repair under warranty, such as a PDK or engine failure, Porsche will send it's own person out to examine the car. At that point, it doesn't matter if the dealer is supportive or not. The Porsche person will find the tune/mods and disclaim warranty coverage.

Unless a dealer is going to offer a written contract to cover warranty work that Porsche does not, you are really playing a game of Russian roulette if your dealer promises to support the mods.

There is only one Porsche tuner in the US that has warrantied in writing the repair of OEM parts due to damage from its mods: Champion Motorsports. Absent such a written obligation, I do not see any Porsche dealer willing to shoulder the cost of replacing one of our ultra expensive engines or transmissions that goes down due to a mod.

Stated differently, cooperative dealers won't blow the whistle on you if you have mods not but once corporate gets involved and sends an expert out to examine the cause and origin of failure of a major component, the dealer's support means little at that point.

It has become apparent to me that the majority of members here appear to be sufficiently Baller to bear the financial risk of a blown engine or PDK not being replaced under warranty during what would otherwise be the warranty period. That's a personal choice. For me the choice was easy. I picked the Champion warranty and had my work done by Champion.

Of course, right now the fastest 991 Turbos in the US are Cobb/ByDesign cars. By far. Whether that changes or not once Champion gets out its turbo upgrade I don't know.

So in picking your tuner you have to decide what's the most important priority to you.

 

Well said and couldn't agree more with your post as a whole. When it comes to anything warranty related, unless it's in writing from your tuner/dealer, you are rolling the dice. That's one of the major reasons some people elect to go with Champion Motorsport.

 

It is all a matter of priorities. The currently available Champion/GIAC mods are neither as extensive nor as fast as the Cobb/ByDesign ones available (still no turbo upgrade).

It all depends on an owner's priorities and tolerance for some financial risk inherent in no warranty coverage.

 

Yup I agree with you. All of us have different thoughts on what we want for our cars and we're lucky to have different options for all. Rich

 

The questions are...How many issues or failures have even occurred? Has a dealer ever had to make that call? Has a motor blown or been covered by anyone yet? Have any clients of other tuners been disappointed? Lastly warranties are ending soon also.

I see these all as important facts AFTER realizing we all do this as a hobby and understand what we are doing is above and beyond the norm. Most important to me is reputation and client/tuner relationship/understanding. After all the data from years of experience and Cobbs dedication to research I know what I am comfortable with and I don't allow my clients to exceed that.

 

A dealer doesn't make that call on a major warranty repair. Porsche does. To me the Porsche warranty term before years 50,000 miles is pretty significant. That's not it and the warranty. My car's in service date is only a little over year ago. So I still have three years or 38k miles, whichever is first, left.

 

Doesn't answer any of the questions though. Are you concerned that the upgrades will hurt your car? Have you seen this happen? And if so why did it happen? I have seen a handful of random issues with cars that were fully upgraded and one way or another it was not a problem. Again, personally I do not plan on pushing a car beyond what lots of extensive data, research and experience have found to be safe and very calculated risk. Obviously there are also cases of random issues with factory cars that have not had any upgrades. There's always a way to take care of it and this is been the case since the day the first car rolled off the assembly line. Upgrades are not a new thing. It's a culture and would love it. These cars are built to run. Overbuilt. Why do you think some offer a warranty? Because there's confidence. It's a good bet. It always works out but having the support, data and a proven set up makes it all the more solid. The idea is to have no issues. I haven't let a customer down yet in almost 20 years!

Remember with the Cobb access port you can monitor your car anytime all the time!

 

Scott my dealer will give me warranty with no problem, it's just a matter of relationships... Champion have a good thing with his warranty but doesn't mean that they are the only ones doing things "safe", It's a good hook to the customer but is not the only alternative

 

Good points. But at least for me, at the end of the day Champion is the only US Porsche tuner of which I am aware of that backs its mods with a written warranty insuring consequential damage to Porsche OEM parts. I am a 20 year commercial/business litigator and I can tell you that a written guarantee provides an owner with much more security than a vague, unenforceable promise that one's mods are "safe" or that the tuner will "never let a customer down". Those kinds of statements offer the tuner wiggle room to get out of covering a major repair. In court they are often considered unenforceable, non specific "puffery".

And as for a dealer offering warranties that's fine if they are in writing and offer coverage for damage to OEM Porsche parts caused by mods. I would love to see some of those. I don't believe many dealers who would, absent one, shell out tens of thousands of dollars for an engine or PDK replacement if Porsche denies warranty coverage due to mods. But if you have such a dealer Enrique who offers that written warranty coverage to you than you are doing really well as that Is a big deal. I have heard that Jack Daniels Porsche in New Jersey offers some sort of warranty coverage but am not familiar with it.

If a tuner truly has confidence in the safety of its mods it can offer a written warranty against consequential damage as Champion does in the Porsche world and Dinan does in the BMW world. When I had my last BMW I had it modded by Dinan rather than a JB4 for that reason. Warranty was why.

Personally I would love to see Champion's competitors actually back up their statements about being safe and never letting a customer down by offering a written warranty against consequential damages rather than vague puffery that is not enforceable. The fact that they don't so raises the question of why they don't. Doing so would be great for my many friends in this community who have mods other than from GIAC and champion.

It all comes down to priorities and what is most important to an owner. Most 991 Turbo owners I know with mods have gone the Cobb/ByDesign route. And right now the Cobb/ByDesign cars are dominating at competitions. That seems to be selling a lot more mods than a written warranty.

 

Scott,
We all know you love your tuner and that you're a litigator. But your style of argument and constant agenda will end up making competitors stronger. I have stepped up to every challenge in this platform and a lot of it was sparked by this type of attitude. It drives me. It drives me to be better and offer more to my clients which are number one and ultimately makes my brand stronger. Read my signature So I thank you and a few others for this. You still didn't answer my questions because you don't have an answer or at least not a good one.

On that note. If anyone is hesitant about going with By Design Automotive Group for performance upgrades because of something like a supplemental warranty. I will step up to the plate and put my money where my mouth is. I will let the potential clients take that for what it is and come to me for it. That is called confidence. I choose not to discuss it with you any longer and now allow you to have the last word and enjoy it.

Cheers

 

I had this concern with my BMW M5. So I chose Dinan and their piggyback solution since they weren't able crack the M5 ECU. Turned out that their piggyback had plenty of issues on it's own. It failed and had to be replaced or else it was too hard to program for the techs at the site since the code had to be downloaded from Dinan. The whole process of loading the software on the piggyback was flawed, I was driving around with Stage 1 when I thought I had paid for Stage 2 because that is what I asked for. However, later I found out that the SA had not remembered to ask for Stage 2 so I had to go back and get it. Coincidentally, the HPFP failed twice after installing the Stage 2 software as well as the fuel pump in the tank and so the car was in the shop more after modding it than it as prior. The warranty helped because it gave Dinan and the BMW dealership a way to work through the problems without charging me but in the meantime, I was driving a loaner which was always a lesser car.

Now the reason I didn't go with GIAC is because there was no installer in Austin and while Park Place up in Dallas has a good relationship with GIAC, the dealership here in Austin is anti-mod for the most part but they have fixed warranty issues on my car. To me, the Cobb solution is the best of all worlds because you flash it on and off in just a couple of minutes. They have all kinds of maps and you can get the custom tunes. Lucky for me they are in town and so I can just walk in if I have an issue and they have put my car on their dyno to demo the performance of the tune which is great because I could never get a dyno otherwise. I don't need the warranty with the Porsche tunes because so far, both the FVD piggyback and the Cobb Flash have been very well done. BMW made it very difficult to do much with the M5 and I am done buying cars from them because they have a lot of other issues with reliability in my experience. So far my Porsches have been way more reliable than the BMWs and they tolerate mods much better. I just don't see the warranty as a big issue. If you over tune your car and wreck the engine, then it's your problem. Clearly these tuners for the Porsches at FVD, GIAC and Cobb know the limits and stay within them.

 

Let's face it, most of the people who mod are just doing the basic tune and maybe exhaust. A written warranty in this case is very valuable to the masses who want more performance on their street driven car only and don't want to worry about anything. This warranty is otherwise unheard of in the aftermarket performance world.

There are thousands of 997.2 and 991 turbos sold and a very very small handful of people pushing the limit running upgraded turbos and stuff like that. Those that do absolutely run the risk of blowing something up eventually and I would imagine these people know the risks they are taking. And anyone who says otherwise is full of sh*t. I doubt anyone - including Champion - would warranty an upgraded turbo car but I don't speak for them.

 

Back to the OP. I think this ECU is going to be harder to crack. I know that some believe that Porsche will follow Mercedes and sue aftermarket companies that modify the software in the car by changing the data tables. There is a software license issue here that while I didn't sign a license agreement, there is a copyright on the software and it's possible that the data tables could fall under the blanket of the copyright. It's a tricky situation and the easiest way for Porsche to limit that is by making the ECU uncrackable but that makes it harder for them to service the car themselves.

I didn't see anyone having too much trouble cracking this one but maybe the .2 will be different. That was definitely the case from the E60 to the F10 for the M5.

 

That's the way they've started to treat engine software in Europe, which is why you most European tuners starting to switch to piggyback-type tuning solutions. It's also why the level of security and encryption in the new Porsche ECU's is unlike anything that's been around before. Mark my words....things are going to change.

 

This could be a benefit for resale of the .1 cars if Porsche can't up their game significantly with the .2 out of the box and the tunes don't do much for it. The tuned .1 cars could carry more value later because of their capability for significant power gains with moderate tunes.