Aight guys... im realllly fukin pissed off.
Here is tha story.

I got my Car 2002 TL-S... about two yrs ago (Nov. 01)... After I got the car i clear cornered and lowered it.

I have had NO problems with it since then in regards to those mods. So my car gets keyed (Which PISSES me off in itself), but that is besides the point. I pay my deductable and get my car fixed by :
SUNRISE PAINT AND BODY IN HOUSTON TX

They took off the headlights to paint it and reinstalled (seems easy enough). Picked it up and it was sunny all week, then it rains and there is moisture all in the headlight and the drivers headlight doesn't work. I took it to them and they put in new bulb and nothin worked.
"Its an electrical issue... take it to the dealer"

So I take it to the dealer and now they are saying since the car has been moded that they will not cover it and wants to charge me $850 in parts to cover it. and they are saying that the moisture caused the problem blah blah

IM SO PISSED!! Ive had my car clear cornered for over a year and a half with NO Problems what so ever... I take it to get painted and now the headlight is ****ed and "We can't cover it cause its been moded" Then Shop is saying "We can't cover it because we didnt take the headlights apart blah blah" EVEN THOUGH IT WORKED FINE UNTILL I TOOK IT TO THEM!!


DONT EVER GO TO SUNRISE OR STERLING MCCALL ACURA!!!!

 

Well honestly I wouldn't blame your Acura dealer at all.. it's not their fault. They are right in that you opened the headlights to mod them.

However, I would be pissed at your body shop... and I would do whatever is possible to get them to fix your headlights. If you've had your car like this for a year and it just had a problem now then it's obvious they did something with the headlights. The hard part is going to be proving it.

 

OK this is the deal... i have pics of my headlights before I took it there. Allstate also took pictures of the entire car... two days before I took it to them for the claim. I should be able to contact them and get the pics. That should prove that everything was fine before I took it to them.

But I still think that they will bull**** me. I told them this and argued for about an hour with every manager in the shop!


AHHHH!!!!!!

They even did work on my car prior to this and I had this mod done.

 

Try and take them to small claims court, like Judge Judy type of court. If you have pictures and receipts to back up your claims then you might have a chance or at least get half of what it might cost you to fix. Acura is totally in the clear but the body shop might be liable.

 

I thought mods did not void your warranty under the Magnus Moss warranty act???

 

well he did open the head lights which probably cause the lamp to burn out so that cancel out the Magnus Moss warranty act out the window...but damn...where they key ur car at..was it reallie that bad?

 

you dont even want to know man... i was REAL fukin pissed.

oh well.

I went and picked up tha car today from tha dealer...
The part I need is a inverter... located on the bottom of the headlight

Any Ideas where I can get one cheap???

 

That's only if the modification did not cause the new problem at hand. For instance, if you lowered the whole car 2" and now the paint is pealing off the roof then that's where the MMWA will protect you from the dealer denying you warranted repairs on the paint.

 

The solution to your problem buddy, is buying a new HID ballast. Most likely it is water that got into your ballast and fried it. You might also need a new ignitor, which is probably not so. A HID ballast on EBAY will run you around $100, so if you're good at doing things yourself, DIY stuff, it would be an easy fix.

-Steve

 

hey so whats up with ur headlight ??? tell me im in the same situation

 

What he said!

Acura wont even look at fixing that problem b/c it's been modified. Defin try and get the body shop to take care of it and if they give you a hard time then there is always legal action......but is it really worth the headache?!?!

 

Hey, I been to Sunrise before also. I know they have a bake the cars after they paint it, so maybe the heat from the "bake" melted or loosed the "glue" (or whatever that stuff is that holds the headlights together) since it was modified. I got my stuff fixed there and never had a problem they could not fix.

If you still have a problem, PM me. I know some of the techs that work there and they are much cooler than the shop manager.

 

Oh man, I wish you would have asked for opinions about that place, I heard some stories...But anyways good luck getting them to cover it.

 

Find someone who has none cleared lights and swap them for yours for a day. Take it to the dealer and the dealer with do it under warranty...

 

good idea...take it to antoher dewaler besides the one you went too tho

 

Might not work.

Dealerships are on a nationwide database system, and if his dealership wanted to be a ****, they would've red-flagged his VIN and note that the headlights have been modified and warranty is void on them.

In which case, swapping headlights won't work, since when the new dealership looks up his info on the Acura database, they will see the note and deny service.

 

Mmmmm....no, each dealership has its own database, unless two dealerships are owned by the same company/dealer and run the same computer software. Otherwise they're using different computer systems and therefore different databases. Currently there are three major companies that sell computer systems to dealerships. I know because I work for one.

Any information they get from Honda is internet based and is confined to recalls and TSBs, I believe. Maybe they have a dealer network that allows them to flag VINs, but I doubt it. Plus most of the service advisors I know are too lazy to care about something like this.