Less than a year ago I bought an 09' Ralliart with right at 40,000 miles on it. The car had ran great up until I returned from a deployment in August. About a month ago the car broke down on me doing about 35 mph. A big cloud of smoke came out of the exhaust and the car completely shut down. After getting it towed to the Mitsubishi dealership here in town and after the engine was broken down they determined that one of the cylinder had completely broken apart. I was shocked to say the least.

Obviously the car needed a new motor but luckily the car was still under the 60,000 mile power train warranty by Mitsubishi. I thought everything would be fine. Unfortunetly I was wrong. A couple weeks after the warranty claim was submitted by the dealership Mitsubishi's response came back as a "No" they would not cover the new motor. Their justification for this was that the car had been "abused." They ran a test on the car's computer system that showed the car had been "over-revved" to 7095 rpm's for a grand total of 325 seconds or almost 5 and a half minutes. The car redlines at 6500 rpm's. This information showed up in the car's "Air Conditioning" category. I asked the service manager how this could've been done considering the is a rev-limiter on the car and his response was that the car would've had to have been downshiffted at a high speed into a low gear using the paddle shifters on the steering wheel because its an automatic transmission. And let me say this, I've had the car for 9500 miles, I've never done anything like this to the car while I've had it because I am not an idiot...unlike the previous owner apparantly was. Also, the car is completely stock and to the best of my knowledge as well as what the dealership told me there are no signs the ECU had ever been flashed.

So after Mitsubishi denied the claim, another claim was then sent to my extended warranty company. I bought a 36,000 mile extended warranty when I bought the car. That warranty had power train coverage on it as well. They denied the claim as well citing the same reason as Mitsubishi. My problem with them is their warranty started 9000 miles ago, even if I did "over-rev" the car thats not enough time to do enough damage for a cylinder to completely break apart...at least I wouldn't think so.

So basically what I am asking is this: Has anyone ever heard of or had a similar issue with their Ralliart/Evo? Has anyone ever had trouble with Mitsubishi getting they warranty covered? This has been an absolute nightmare to say the least. The bill is almost 9000 dollars and that 9000 I dont have.

Thanks for reading

 

PM'd

 

My question is:
7095 rpm's for a grand total of 325 seconds or almost 5 and a half minutes = This information showed up in the car's "Air Conditioning" category?

How does someone even rev at 7k rpm for 325 seconds? That sounds super bogus.

 

This does sound bogus.


Assuming the stock ECU and TCU software is in place, manual mode shifting should not allow you to exceed the rev limiter.

 

Mind you, if someone did 7k+ rpm for 5 minutes straight, that could cause an issue haha. I'm not trying to make any comedy of this situation but Mitsubishi becomes more and more comical daily.

 

So the general conclusion I'm starting to come at from a few of these stories is the powertrain warranty doesnt cover anything that goes wrong with the powertrain... that about right?

 

If they can pull the data, I would ask if it is timestamped. If it happened before your owning of the vehicle then it should be on the dealership you bought it from. You might have to get an attourney involved, maybe after you present the facts they will help you out for free until the case is won. But I would take everything to them first, they may advise you to take a loan out to pay for the new engine so that it's a starting point to go after mitsubishi and the 3rd party warranty company. It sucks because Big companies do this all the time and don't really care until they get a letter from someones lawyer. Also this may take up to a year to be resolved.

 

The SST will not allow an over-rev condition by downshift. It will not downshift and it will beep at you.

BS.

 

The SST will not allow an over-rev condition by downshift. It will not downshift and it will beep at you.

BS.

 

Unfortunetly there is no way to break down at what milage or what date the over rev took place. Sounds like to me that was Mitsuibshi's way of covering their *** when things like this happen.

 

And that's the advice I've gotten from outside sources so far...that these cars have rev lmiters to keep the motor safe from abuse(on top of other features like you said)...so if someone intentionally did try to hurt it motor they couldn't even do it. You would think Mitsubishi would know that.

 

Thanks for the replies so far...

I have not and will not be paying for a new motor out of pocket any time soon. I have talked with an attorney and they read over both warranties and found arbitration clauses in both of them...so suing is not an option at this point in time. Attached are the printouts the I got from the service manager at the dealership which is the justification they are using. I was told that this information was "hidden" in the air conditioning tab so no one could find it but Mitsubishi.

[ATTACH][/ATTACH]

 

I tried this on my way home. You can NOT downshift to cause an over rev because the tranny will NOT let you. If they claimed that this was caused by downsifting, then they are admiting the damage was caused by a faulty tranny and they are on the hook for both the motor AND a new tranny that is obviously faulty.

Mitsubish warranty is basically toilet paper. The dealership make up whatever excuse they want to not do the warranty work and mitsu corporate offical response to complaints is to call the dealership and agree with them with nobody actually coming to take a second look at your car...or hell even TALK to you. If you don't have a good dealership near you, don't bother with warranty.

edit: okay looking at the print outs, they are two different codes. The 113 shows that you went at high speeds (high engine rev) for about 5 and a half min. Not sure what is considered high speed for this car, but it is not the rev limit or above (and my time on that is much MUCH higher then 325). The 114 just means that 7000rpm was reached at ONE point...most likely on a rev limit bounce because you forgot to shift in manual mode. Neither of this is actual proof of abuse as the engine should be able to take the occasional rev limit bounce and some high revving fun (which 5 min in 50k miles doesn't sound unreasonable). Basically mitsu is giving you the shaft. I think that if anyone is gonna get another mitsu (I'm not...and I owned them my whole life), they need to start deducting like 3 grand from the selling price as the warranty is worthless.

 

An arbitration clause may nevertheless be challenged and held invalid if it designates a biased party as the arbitrator. In Graham v. Scissor-Tail, Inc, 623 P.2d 165 (Cal. 1981), for example the Supreme Court of California found that an arbitration clause in a contract of adhesion which necessarily puts disputes before a body that would tend to be biased towards the defendant, is unduly oppressive, and therefore void as unconscionable. For this reason, many arbitration clauses designate widely recognized neutral organizations such as the American Arbitration Association.

 

If you can afford, I hope you fight for this. and if there's somebody with ralliart around that can show the dealership that what they're claiming aren't possible due to rev limit, that qould be great. if I'm just close to you, I will volunteer my car.