Now I know the general feeling on it is if you flash the PCM and show up at the dealership with a non-stock tune on your truck that you'd void your warranty (Assuming they checked the trucks Strategy). But is there any ACTUAL information in the Ford Warranties that claims to void a warranty if you flash your PCM.. and whats the likelihood that they would/could notice if you had previously flashed to another program?

Reason for asking is I've got a buddy who has an 08 F150 5.4, he has put on an AirRaid CAI and replaced the exhaust with straight pipes. I suggested to him that he shell out the 300-400.00 to get a tuner and some tunes to tie those few things together to get the best performance out of his truck while keeping it cheap. His major concern was that he would void his warranty and decided that he would wait until after his warranty was up. Well the normal warranty on it is until 60 or 80k and he even purchased for roughly $2,000 the extended warranty. It just seems like if you can't enjoy your truck while its newer and have to wait til its had some mileage put on it, whats the point, its your truck. I keep trying to reassure him that he won't get screwed out of his warranty if he flashes his PCM with some custom tunes, if he is so nervous about it, before bringing it in he can just flash back over to the Stock tune... maybe drive it a bit after that flash.

Does this make sense or am I miss-leading him?

 

I used "search" and found;
https://www.f150online.com/forums/ch...ml#post4128101
https://www.f150online.com/forums/20...ml#post3853251
https://www.f150online.com/forums/20...-warranty.html

 

I think I'd be more concerned with the CAI and the exhaust voiding the warranty than a programmer that can be easily removed and a "tuning footprint" that is only discovered with special diagnostic equipment.

- Jack

 

Normally, cat back exhaust is never mentioed by a dealer. A CAI is a definite suspect by some dealers.

 

At one point he was flipping out when his PCM was acting funky, revving really high but not putting any power to the wheels, to the point he was ready to bring it to the dealer. He was panicked and started asking for original in-take plastics back that he gave me to perform the Gotts-Intake mod on my truck since it was the larger 3" inlet. Long story short... I told him to chill the heck out and just reset the PCM by leaving the negative only on his battery for about 10 minutes. Sure enough this fixed the problem and my vehicle got to keep its CAI mod