Mike Marlow said:
Deck - for cripe's sake - if you don't include the text that you are
responding to, no one knows what your talking about.
Service to maintain warranty is nothing new. If you never changed the oil
in your Ford or GM car or truck, do you think you'd have any warranty?
Hyundai does not require you to have the service performed by a Hyundai
dealer - though for some parts they do require Hyundai parts to be used
for
the warranty on that part to remain in effect - or failures related to
that
part. Nothing really so unique about that either. Ford or GM don't stand
behind anyone else's parts.
--
I'd like to clarify a bit..... In the US, Hyundai - or anyone else selling a
consumer type thing with a warranty - cannot require you to have maintenance
or repair work done by anyone specific. They also cannot make you use a
certain brand of anything to do that work.
What they can and do do is provide specifications - SP ABDC123 transmission
fluid, 10w-30 SUZ motor oil, DOT 9 brake fluid, etc. for things to be used
in the repair or maintenance of the vehicle. Now, we all know that the only
place that you can buy the Hyundai specified ATF is at Hyundai, Kia, or
Mitsubishi dealers, but they are not saying you have to buy it from them.
They just say something to the effect that if damage occurs from the use of
non-specified fluid, they are not fixing it free. The third party - "can be
used in place of Hyundai xxx fluid" - suppliers mostly say that if it can be
shown that their fluid broke it, they'll pay to fix it. If you put what they
say to in the vehicle's transmission when they say to in the manual, and the
transmission smokes at less than 100,000 miles, they can't say you didn't
maintain it properly. If on the other hand you decide to do a flush at
10,000 miles and put Type-F fluid in the transmission, and it cooks while it
should be under warranty, they get to fix / replace it, and hand you a bill
for the repairs, and Valvoline will say it's not their problem because they
didn't say Type F works in a Hyundai, either.
As for repairs under warranty, things that break that are listed as being
covered by warranty need to be repaired by whoever Hyundai says honors the
Hyundai warranty - the Hyundai dealer system- or you get to pay whoever does
the repairs. Things that break while the vehicle is mostly under warranty
that are not covered by warranty - tires, brake pads, the rear bumper if you
back into a tree, etc. - don't have to be worked on by a Hyundai dealer.
Lets say your left rear wheel bearing goes bad, and you decide get Sears to
replace it. You pay Sears (no, I don't know if they actually replace wheel
bearings) to do the work. Everything on the vehicle that was under warranty
is still under warranty except the left rear wheel bearing. If the left rear
bearing goes bad again, it's Sears warranty, not Hyundai's. If the right
rear bearing goes bad, it's still under the Hyundai warranty.
Same thing goes for add-ons. If you put a 400 amp alternator in the vehicle
to run the thumpmobile amplifier, and the engine throws a rod, as long as
you've been changing the oil on time with the right stuff, it would be
covered under warranty. If the water pump, or power steering pump goes bad,
and they figure out that the 12 inch pulley on the new alternator made the
belt tighter, you will be paying for a new pump, and tensioner, and etc. If
you leave the non-stock alternator on, and stuff breaks again, you will pay
again. If the regulator in the non-stock alternator decides to make 36
volts, and blows up everything electrical in the car, that's not warranty
either.
Bottom line... You can work on it yourself - they even say so in the manual.
If you don't do what they say to do, and something breaks because of what
you didn't do, THE THING that breaks is your problem. I asked about the O2
sensors because if they say to replace them, and I don't, and the care fails
an emissions test what would otherwise be Hyundai's problem to fix now is
mine - like if the cat. fails because of high HC to the exhaust. Of course,
if the O2 sensors are that bad, it will never go closed loop, and it will
throw a code long before the cat gets damaged - especially with three in the
stream.
