I have had the Revi w/ Ram air for a couple months(about 1500 miles with new intake) now and yesterday had the car taken in for some maintenance. They called me today to tell me that my car was ready and also said that they noticed I had an aftermarket intake. They alerted me(which I already knew) that if the intake caused a part on my engine to fail, they could void the warranty on my engine.

I have been reading and searching on some warranty info and this seems to be pretty in line with other experiences people have with their dealers and what they have to say(can void warranty if part caused the problem.)


So, my question is, all of you with the Revi(w/ or w/o Ram Air), have you had any problems with it, how long have you had it for, and if it happened to cause problems, did the dealer void your warranty for it? From what I have heard, Racing Beat is a very reliable and honest company that makes parts to last so I am not expecting it to fail, not anytime soon at least.

Thanks for all the info.

 

in another thread i heard about a dealer who blamed second or third gear grinding on the intake.


I think it would be hard for the intake to "fail". Maybe the filter can get clogged, but so can the stock one.

 

I read about the one with the gear grind as well which seems completly ridiculous...

 

this brings up my question of how well the ram air part of the REVi intake system, keeps water out? i guess it isn't high enough for it to suck in enough water to do any damage. sorry for the hijack.

 

well, intake and exhausts do not void warranty. It would be hard to blame something like those on warranty, but you never know... service departments are a pain.

 

IF u knew you engine took a ****, i would remove anything that the dealer would could have caused this......that why i have kept my oem intake and exhaust....belive me i will have that bitch towed to the house and do some part swapping before i had it towed in to the dealer.....from what i have heard and read on most forums they are looking for any and everything to get out of replacing engines and trannys..............

 

You have the perfect opportunity to answer this question for us all. Call the service department back and talk to the Service Manager. Report to him the previous statement made by his employee, and ask him "what engine parts could possibly fail as a result of an aftermarket intake." Explain that you are writing them down for future reference, if needed, and that you need his list to be comprehensive. After he's done, let him know that you expect all other warranty claims on your vehicle to be fully covered. Let us know what happens.

 

Maybe you could ask whether they would still void your warranty if you use the stock one again.

 

Alright, I'm picking it up today and I'll let you know how it goes.

 

i'll put my little 2 cents into this...

I had a secondary valve in the intake rust up and fail - which required the engine to be pulled out because of some seriously shitty packaging that requires an engine removal to take off the lower intake manifold. Luckily all I had was a stock intake with a K&N panel filter so the service manager could not give me any grief about warranty issues.

Had I had a REVi and ram air duct, I would have fully expected them to claim the intake was sucking up water mist from driving in traffic in the rain which caused the failure. I would have also fully expected them to give me a $2k bill for a $50 part failure... it would have been extremely hard to disprove their theory

I think the ultimate moral of the story is don't modify your car unless you have enough money to fix something major... people that have invested in turbo's are finding this out

 

Wait a minute - why would you try to disprove their theory? My understanding of the law (the Magnussen-Morrison-Morrissey-Mansfield-whatever it was called act) is that the manufacturer has the burden of proof to PROVE that the non-stock part CAUSED the damage. A grease monkey's theory that long-term exposure to moist air from a ram air duct does not, in my mind, meet this burden of proof.

By the way, as this is likely to be a significant source of worry for many of us, is there any data about the amount of suction generated by the Revi intake, and whether it's even capable of sucking water up the ram air duct into the intake? I can't imagine any of us testing this, but Racing Beat should be able to measure the suction of the intake, and reproduce that amount of suction with the duct opening submersed in water. If the engine cannot possibly generate the suction required to flood the intake box, then we could legitimately refuse to accept this "thoery".

 

I would say 100% reliable.

Remember that the ram duct has a built in scrubber on the backside. Airflow has to up the back wall and hit the scrubber where the holes are drilled to release water. It works fine to keep water out. I have had the REVi and Ram duct installed the day they were made available to the public. I just drove through 45 days of straight rain in the Pacific Northwest this winter, and I opened the air box from the backside, and it was dry.

 

I'm not sure what can go wrong since it is only a box with an air filter in it. The stock airbox has more that can go wrong with it as it adds the VFAD actuator.

If anyone is worried aobut sucking water into the intake, even with the ram air duct, they should stop driving their car underwater! I have an air filter alot lower than that on my daily driver and have gone through numerous puddles and rainstorms and have never even seen a hint that any water got even part way up to the throttle body. The only way you will get water in the intake is if you completely submerge 100% of the intake opening where there is a vacumm which will pull water into the system. If you drive in water where you can get to this point, you deserve to have it happen to you. You could submerge half of the inlet duct in water and you still would not get any up into the engine. The ram air duct is shaped in such a way as it helps to separate water from air and let it drain back out. You really need to be careless in order to have water get into the engine. What would most likely happen is that you would damage other things from high water first before you'd kill the engine. That is a non issue and the only thing that would cause it is driver error. You might get the occasional leaves, bugs, dust, etc up in the air box but that's why you have an air filter. That just means that you are getting a good supply of outside air and your filter is doing a good job of keeping things out. Perfect.

I don't see what can go wrong other than you'd get a very ignorant person at the dealership working on your car. Unfortunately you are at VERY high risk of this happening.

 

there are holes at the back of the bend of the duct to allow water to escape. plus a little water ingestion is good for steam cleaning the combustion chambers

 

I have had my intake on since April, and the RAM Air duct since just after it was made available. And have not until today had an issue.

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...06#post1242906

Outside of that, I have had no issues. I don't even really have a problem with large debris ending up in the airbox, b/c the duct is behind the grill, and if it is too big to go through the mesh of the grill, how is it going to get into the small portals on the duct.

Besides, I have been able to talk my way out of getting hassled, by reminding the service manager, that Mazdaspeed is releasing a CAI, that is very similar to the AEM unit, and this one seems much more sophisticated. It seems to work, it did today.

 

Alright! Here is a the results from my trip to the dealer.

First of all, he tried to screw me over with my warranty. He said, "You know that since you have an aftermarket intake installed, your engine warranty is void. I corrected him by saying, "Uh, no sir it is not. Only if it the intake causes a part in the engine to fail, then can the engine warranty be declared void, and this is what the service lady I spoke with on the phone said as well..."
He kind of studdered for a minute and then said, "Yes that is true... so you recognize the fact that if your intake causes a part of your engine to fail, then your warranty is voided on the engine?" I said, "Yes, (I just corrected you on that!)"
He then said, "But if you get a CEL and it is because their was an issue with something besides the engine, then it does not affect your engine warranty at all. (duh..)
"Yes sir, I understand that.'
"Well, what I would recommend is that you go back to your stock intake since the aftermarket ones really provide you little to no power gain."
I sort of nodded my head to let him know I was considering this, but in my head said, "No, I get better gas mileage, a small amount of horsepower, and a much more aggressive sound."
But the guys there are *********! Trying to void my warranty thinking I would not realize they couldn't.
Secondly, I asked him to make me a list of parts that could break but he went off on that tangent previously mentioned about the warranty. Soooo, we ended the conversation with him talking about how much faster the Mazdaspeed 6 was and him saying I should make an appointment to test drive one. Uh, no thanks, I bought an RX-8 and do not want a MS 6. BTW, this is Key Mazda in Hardeville S.C. I am refferring to.

So back to the topic, anyone with the Revi w/wo ram air can you tell me your miles/months on it and if its given you any problems?

 

Water causing a piece of steel to rust is not hard to prove to a jury (aka usually a bunch of village idiots). Neither would be convincing them the ram air is sucking in water mist from driving in heavy traffic during rain storms. So hence it would come back to you to shoot holes in the theory.

No there is not enough suction there to drive your car up to the bumper and have it suck up water like a shop-vac. But, seeing that the ram air is positioned directly in the path of dirty air it could engulph water mist. The stock system will not since the intake is hidden behind the bumper which would deflect any water droplets.

 

First of all you'll never have a trial by jury over an intake and second it is just as easy to shoot down tha water arguement anyways. If you end up in court because water killed something, it was probably your fault anyways and not the fault of the part. It's a nonissue.

 

chances are most judges wouldn't be very car savy either...

I watched judge judy one time award a bunch of money to a complaitant who accused a roofer of putting defective plywood on the roof which caused it to collapse 3 years later.... when really it was rotted out joyce's the complaitant refused to replace when putting on a new roof.

 

i think you mean roof joist's were rotted out. in construction, to the best of my knowledge, there are no joyce's, met a woman GC once, but no Joyce's