advice needed please

three weeks ago my mate put his 95 wrx into a tuning garage and had a new chip fitted a boost gauge, basicly he was driving it on boxing day and hte car kicked out loads of smoke and died, he has spoke with the garage and it went to them yesterday they are saying the ecu has packed up and they dont know what damage it has caused as yet, but they are claiming it might not be their fault,

what i need to find out for him is if the ecu can just break like that or is it more likely something they have done as it seems suspect to me that they fitted a new chip a few weeks back and now this has happened

thanks

steve

 

guys please any onw got any ideas for me he has been told the ecu has just packed up but it was only a few weeks ago it was in the work shop.

would they of touched/ played with the ecu when fitting the chip or what is the chip located in near or away from the ecu.

they are going to bill him for a new ecu and they say maybe a few of the valves will be damaged and will bill him for that too

guys any help before he spends his cash would be really handy

 

I have never witnessed a ecu "pack up". As far as i understand they are very robust and reliable......(well except french ecus ..lol)
If he had a chip fitted then they will have had to open up the ecu and solder it in or solder a chip holder in and then push the chip in. They could have goofed the ecu themselves when they had the lid off/when they were soldering it. If it were me i would kick up a stink and insist THEY fix the damage IF it is the ecu at fault seeing THEY were the last to mess with it. What sort of chip was fitted? who mapped it?

Thats my 2p
Andy

 

the work was carried out by power engerneering not too sure what chip was fitted,

so they would of had to have played with the ecu to fit the chip, see i have never heard of a ecu packing up is that right?

they say the ecu just clapped out wht are the chances of that happening

 

Its gonna be hard for your mate to argue that P.E damaged the ecu really. ECUs CAN fail. Power engineering are a respected name, but hey, seems odd the ecu should pack up soon after they have played with it!

 

What has actually died, the ECU or the engine? If it's the ECU PE should stump up no problem under warranty. However if the engine has gone, your mate should have made sure it was in good woking order before getting the power hiked. Proving they did/didn't do something right when tuning it would be almost impossible.

 

I dont really see why the valves would be damaged from ecu failure unless it was mapped or running lean and has destroyed the engine from det.In this case its likley to be more than just valves

The smoke that came from it? was it from the exhaust or the engine bay or from the ecu

 

for valves to be bent you would think the timming belt had snapped.

 

Agreed

 

guys i will find out more about it at work tomorrow when i see him, not too sure where the smoke came from,

as i said they say the ecu has packed up would this cause the engine to det.?

i know he spent around the 800 mark so i guess they remapped it at the same time but again i will find out more

 

was the car getting horsed when smoke appeared and engine died

 

hi guys i spoke to him today at work and no he was not tanking it was just driving around, he said that it was a grey smoke and it came from the engine through the vents etc, any ideas what has happened to cause the ecu to pack up and the engine to dump out smoke?

would powereng..... be liable as they fitted the chip etc then

 

whats the best suggestion/deal that he should go with as it must be hard or near on impossible to prove they did or didnt do anything

 

it would help to know what is wrong. It could be related to the chip but may not be at all

 

hey mate sorry to hear about this.. the same thing happened to my car after coming from powestation.. i had about 700's worth of work done including tune up,fuel cut defender etc... then 3 weeks down the line i had loads of smoke start coming out from under the bonnet and almost instantly huge clouds of blue smoke from the back of the car.. i rang them and they made some excuse or another.. when i took the engine out it was found to be a melted piston and ring from what was apparently obvious that the car was running far too lean.. when i repeated this to the garage they just said that it wasn't there fault although they had just had it on the rolling road monitering everything and setting it up?? rather than taking it any further as i don't really have the time i have just decided to only go to trusted names for any work to be done on my car in the future.. the only person im allowing to set up or play with my car is Andy Forrest as i know he is trusted and one of the best when it comes to impreza's..
hopefully your mates car hasn't gone in the same way or he'll have a pretty impressive bill coming..
if you can prove the garage was at fault you would be able to force them to fix the car but proving it may be difficult.. You really need the car to go to an independant garage to find out the exact cause of the failure and that way you can gather the facts and use them to force the garage involved to warrenty the work that needs doing..

 

interesting!

 

thats the thing proving it even though it seems to be the obvious reason why it went wrong is going to be almost impossible, he ahs already put it back to them to let them have a look at it so i think he is going to be left with paying for it

as for a trusted tuner it was just goes to show you can never be too sure that your car is safe

steve

 

sounds like a melted piston, number 3 usually, would be interesting to see what map is on that new chip tho! they could also be saying the ecu failed causing it to detonate so it covers their own backs after doing a poor job.

if it were me id have the ecu tested and see if it has really broken, or if it contains a poor map, dont just take their word for it!!

 

number three the choclate piston i have heard it being refered to on older classics, anyone know where he can have the ecu checked what defines a poor map sorry this all new to me just glad its not mine (touch wood and lots of it)

 

guys just want to say thanks for all the advise, my mate kept on the guy who did the work has been takem off the job and it passed over to someone else. turns out the ecu was fine just on a blag it had not been mapped properly and was running lean and blew piston 1 and 3, the have anitted liability and are fixing it as we speak.

my mate is well happy as you can imagine

steve

 

Great news. Very interesting though that the big guys can get a map wrong. Scary as i was looking for a custom map not long ago. Think i stick with the trusty z4!

Andy

 

told ya so, welcome to the community!

 

Lots of smoke and engine dying. Sounds like to me that the engine packed-up due to the aftermarket chip. What type of chip was it? Did it over stress the engine? What condition was the WRX engine in before chipping?

Sorry to be so blunt

 

as far as i know it was solid before not too sure what chip he had put in it either i am affraid but the say it was not fuel map was wrong and it ran lean so went pop.

just happy that a company out its hands up and took the blame its not often you here of companies acepting the blame

 

to be fair i think thats well good of the company involved.. Everyone makes mistakes and by putting there hands up and admitting it i think it deserves respect. Obviously a company worth a bit of trust fair play to them. Most companies would have just denied any responsibility

 

I don't believe it would be the map.
PE would of done so many of these over the years and no doubt have many many many versions on file that they can blow into the device.
Every car can be slightly different, but their not so different that they can melt 2 pistons so quickly.

PE don't map to the max anyway, and always leave in a safety margin. Some of the other mappers on here are alot more aggressive.

It was probably more the case that the MAF was faulty and wasn't detected (or some other obviouse fault)
OR
PE don't want alot of negative s'net feedback. Which is what they got about 5 years ago in early Impreza tuning days, when a 22B went pop.

good on em' though for stumping up the rebuild costs.......