Buyers Beware: Tuning Your F-Type Might Require A New Engine
Making changes to your engine while still under warranty can get you into muddy waters if an actual warranty claim needs to be made.
Temptation to modify a car can really get to any of us. This becomes especially true with the promise of big horsepower gains. At least, that was the promise given to one JaguarForums member. With a tune and upper pulley, a claim of an additional 100 horsepower was the touted result. This immediately raised some red flags to other members.
Those familiar with tunes know that a simple ECU re-mapping will almost never net 100 horsepower. But, an upgraded supercharger pulley change and a good tune might. JVIII decided to give it a go anyway on his 2017 V8 F-type. That’s when things started to unravel. The car’s tune didn’t deliver on its promises and the car actually had some noticeable hiccups in the rev range. A re-flash to bring the ECU back to stock parameters was unsuccessful, and ultimately when it was looked at by a Jaguar dealership, they’d noticed the ECU had some tinkering done to it.
Unfortunately, Jaguar wouldn’t touch the engine in terms of warranty work. It was later found that the engine issues were supposedly from running low on oil. The only prescribed fix was a new engine. A tough pill to swallow for an engine that had hardly covered 5,000 miles.
But here’s the issue at hand: an ECU tune will almost never make an engine run low on oil. A change in fuel mapping doesn’t touch the components of an engine in any way at all. Although it could cause a rich or lean running condition, it would not contribute to the engine starving of oil.
Ultimately, most tuning software will work perfectly fine, and there’s plenty of success stories out there. This kind of warning story still spells out the worst case scenario, however, and is worthy of consideration.
