FCA Canada voids transmission warranty for using AMSOIL.

[@californiajeeping]

Damn that's right. He's in the Great White North. Still a lot of coin!

He should take a week vacation to michigan and let FCA try to blame the oil at a local dealer

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[Maximus Gladius]

He should take a week vacation to michigan and let FCA try to blame the oil at a local dealer

Early on in this fight, I was daily in contact with US AMSOIL tech and management. I was battling hard for AMSOIL, providing their paper work and “warranty safe” propaganda and was getting nowhere. The first AMSOIL tech that was in direct contact with my rep said “this was going to be a cake walk, as soon as the paper work is filed with the dealership and FCA, they’ll back track and lift my warranty restriction.” “They can’t do this.”

Then it was apparent this cake walk was getting tough. So I fought harder and my rep said he was told if legal has to step in, they will support me and sue Chrysler.

My rep was a good presence and even called customer care. It was then that he learned my original complaint filed with FCA on January 3rd was “lost” and he texted me immediately to refile it and give permissions for AMSOIL to access the file and speak to it with FCA.

US AMSOIL backed off and said their legal department would not get involved and I was doing everything right. It would settle quickly. As time went on and updates were provided to AMSOIL, they stepped away and would not provide any more support other than what they already did. I told them I’m up here fighting my ass off for them and if this goes down the toilet, this would be a blow for them. They already had a great case for slander against the DSM for accusing Amsoil for the destruction of the transmission, cooler and hoses. (Without investigating). AMSOIL walked.

They are now a spanked donkey wondering why ZF doesn’t approve of their data sheet compliance. So now, you know what else is false along with their data sheet spec compliance?,….all their “warranty secure” bullshit that every rep up here has in their shops and shows they attend to give out to everyone.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I'd be extremely wary of the stuff AMSOIL says after checking for myself the exact verbiage on some of their marketing materials, promises and warranties.

This one in particular could in theory catch people with pants down -

That act says no such thing about extending oil change intervals.
You can use any brand of oil, but it will have to meet the OEM's specs. You can't go out and say I'm gonna use Walmart buck a bottle 50 weight because I'm told it's better - and then extend the changes out to 20,000 miles.
Lack of service will get you into trouble and nowhere does any law say "you can use the item in any way you like and you don't need to take care of it".
If you extend the interval and they find it was the oil that caused things to fail, any automaker has a right to blame the owner.
You can use the BRAND you wish, but you can't just go out and say oil is oil is oil is oil.
I could trash mine in days with the wrong oil.

Here's the act and if you look - they CAN indeed say that you must maintain or service a vehicle in a certain way or at certain intervals.
They have exceptions to this act for maintenance intervals -
---------------------
(c) Prohibition on conditions for written or implied warranty;
waiver by Commission
No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or
implied warranty of such product on the consumer's using, in
connection with such product, any article or service (other than
article or service provided without charge under the terms of the
warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name;
except that the prohibition of this subsection may be waived by the
Commission if -
(1) the warrantor satisfies the Commission that the warranted
product will function properly only if the article or service so
identified is used in connection with the warranted product, and
(2) the Commission finds that such a waiver is in the public
interest.
------------
They can require maximum service intervals. They cannot require that you use THEM or THEIR products. They CAN require the intervals and that any other product used to maintain meet certain standards.

The part in red is where they cannot require their own brand or any specific brand or company do the work and provide the parts.
The part in green is where the company - FCA in this case, can say, yes, it will only function if maintenance is done following these minimums.

AMSOIL is wrong.
Jeep can require specific specs and maintenance intervals.
According to AMSOIL, I could use their products and never change oil, ever. And they'd cover it. Would love to see that. Maybe I should switch to AMSOIL in my 73 and drive the heck out of it and see if I can get a new engine out of them.


You can bet your sweet Aunt Bippy that the legal sharks at FCA have gone over things with a fine-tooth comb - and that this bit is rock solid - damage caused by poor or improper maintenance..........

 

[Maximus Gladius]

AMSOIL reason for legal “backing off and not getting involved” was explained as “cross boarder issues” At the time, I thought it was Canada/US issues and maybe that’s true when looking at legal jurisdictions but now thinking about it further, Chrysler is now owned by a Netherlands company. Is it fair to assume the “cross boarder” issues now involve the legal system of the Netherlands?

 

[ShadowsPapa]

AMSOIL reason for legal “backing off and not getting involved” was explained as “cross boarder issues” At the time, I thought it was Canada/US issues and maybe that’s true when looking at legal jurisdictions but now thinking about it further, Chrysler is now owned by a Netherlands company. Is it fair to assume the “cross boarder” issues now involve the legal system of the Netherlands?

Naw, Jeep is made by an American subsidiary of the Dutch company "Stellantis".
They have to have counterparts in various places like Ford and others do.
They would be dealing not with the Dutch, but with Stellantis North America, officially known as FCA US.
So the Dutch wouldn't even be involved.
Jeep is still made by an American company, which is a subsidiary of a Dutch company.
The lawyers involved would all be American sharks from our own US waters.

 

[Maximus Gladius]

Naw, Jeep is made by an American subsidiary of the Dutch company "Stellantis".
They have to have counterparts in various places like Ford and others do.
They would be dealing not with the Dutch, but with Stellantis North America, officially known as FCA US.
So the Dutch wouldn't even be involved.
Jeep is still made by an American company, which is a subsidiary of a Dutch company.
The lawyers involved would all be American sharks from our own US waters.

I guess our Canadian sharks are too tough to tackle. Blood runs ice cold here, like my wife’s feet.

 

[LostWoods]

Saying "I'm experienced" isn't a valid argument. Saying "here's solid evidence that the OP's wear levels were normal before the flush" would have been a valid argument. And nobody is debating that he voided his warranty with the non-oem flush anyway. You seem to have some sort of a grudge against amsoil and all these evil oil labs so I'm going to call it a day here.

I have a grudge against universal ATF regardless of brand. It wasn't acceptable in many new cars 20 years ago and it's certainly not acceptable now. I've said nothing about Amsoil except for their universal ATF as it applies to modern transmissions so where are you getting that I have a grudge? Just because Amsoil makes great ATF for your 1973 Charger doesn't mean that applies to a modern vehicle. The nature of ATF makes it impossible for Amsoil "certified" for dozens of different specs to truly act similarly in all those cases. It will be inferior to proper dedicated ATF in every one of those cases.

And I'm not saying the oil labs are evil, they're a business and businesses exist to make money. At the risk of offending in this current context, the problem is people take a one-off test and gain this false fear and confidence. These kinds of tests are intended to establish a baseline then track contaminants and wear indicators over time, much like you do in industry. Where and how you take the sample will have all the impact in the world because I can take 5 samples from a vehicle and get 5 wildly different results. These were never intended as a one-off test and without a baseline, a single analysis is borderline useless unless there are significant contaminants that will negatively impact the fluid.

Blackstone defines "trace" as a very low amount. As I said above, it typically means detected, but not significant. Traces of a chemical commonly used in machining is not any more cause for alarm than finding small amounts of copper or iron in a transmission pan the first time it's dropped. Copper is a common component in the clutches and drums and everything inside that isn't aluminum is most likely ferrous. The metals don't significantly degrade the quality of the fluid in the short term so assuming the filter does its job to filter out larger pieces, those metals will all congregate in the pan which is where I assume OP's sample came from.

My head hurts. I think LostWoods is right when it comes to doing UOA just shows irrational behaviour. My troubles only began when I checked how the fluid was doing and saw glycol contamination and thought I could fix it, first with going to the dealership for help. I think the rational choice now is to not do UOA’s and watch all my problems go away.

To address this in relation to my comment above that wasn't directed at you in particular, you deciding to flush the transmission may or may have been the right call, I really can't say. There's definitely elevated levels of those metals but there's no way to know it's "damning" or anything else. All I've meant from my posts in this thread is that the correlation of events prior to the point of the transmission being serviced with the wrong fluid and the point it failed does not imply a causation. It may have been on its way out but we'll never know because of the intervention.

When I said irrational I mean in the sense that you doubled down and hard committed because you were so confident in all this off a single test. That is why these oil labs piss me off because I dealt with dozens of people with the same sense of fear their vehicle was about to explode. IMO it's a predatory practice because the service they push on consumers isn't how the process is intended to be used.

There's nothing wrong with doing a UOA if you take it at face value and use it for trends, not analysis, there's everything wrong with doing it the way it's sold to consumers. If you don't mind forking out $30 off the bat then another $30 every 6 months or so to compare numbers then it's a good way to keep an eye on things. The problem is that isn't what most people do outside industry or motorsports do.

 

[LostWoods]

And stay away from bad dealerships.
Wonder if the result would have been different in America?

My life got a lot better when I accepted the fact that businesses are full of shit and are not your friend. I don't care how buddy-buddy the sales manager who sold you your truck is or how good a deal they gave you, they did it because you put a check in their pocket and the warm and fuzzy feeling will stick in your head a few years later when you're shopping for another.

They have no loyalty to you, they deserve no loyalty from you. Just because they do you right once does not mean they'll do it again and just because they do something really well doesn't mean they do all things well. They deserve your business as long as they do you right and not a moment longer.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I have a grudge against universal ATF regardless of brand. It wasn't acceptable in many new cars 20 years ago and it's certainly not acceptable now. I've said nothing about Amsoil except for their universal ATF as it applies to modern transmissions

I can't see how you can formulate for such specifics, and then comply with the requirements of another transmission make/model that has differing requirements. It can't be all things to all transmissions. Anti-shudder, viscosity, anti-foam, friction and far more than I can even remember from the lists given us in college.

Here's an interesting tidbit - I wonder if CA actually enforces this - found on a Q&A site about transmissions -

Defining a suitable for use list, showing vehicle models rather than ATF specifications met, satisfactory.
(referring to labeling, etc.)
The California Department of Weights and Measures informed us that they enforce duty-type specifications, measured by industry established procedures. The agency figures that if the statute says you must meet recommended specifications, it means you must follow Dexron, Mercon and other specification requirements. They even will cite and pull from sale an ATF that fails to comply.

That text implies to me that they can't just say "it's fit for Jeep" (duty type) or Chrysler or whatever - they have to show it meets certain specs.

 

[Maximus Gladius]

AMSOIL told me “if ZF doesn’t approve it’s because they didn’t test the oil.” How do they know ZF didn’t test? I told them maybe they should reach out to ZF and ASK! It’s not my job and I’ve fought hard enough for them.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

From a tech company -


Unfortunately, as a customer, it is very difficult to assess whether a particular multi-vehicle ATF is, in fact, suitable for a specific vehicle. With a currently licensed fluid, you know the fluid will work properly because it is manufactured to the precise standards of the auto company. But multi-vehicle ATFs are manufactured to whatever standards the petroleum company chooses, and representations about the ATF’s quality and applications are based on their own testing, not that of the vehicle manufacturer. Moreover, some of the advertising just isn’t accurate.

Over the years, the various formulations of Dexron and Mercon were adopted by a number of other auto manufacturers as the specification for their automatic transmissions, as well. Moreover, because Dexron and Mercon were very similar, these fluids themselves came to be regarded as interchangeable. But, this has led to a nasty habit among some oil companies of claiming that their Dexron/Mercon specification ATF can be used in a whole list of vehicles made by manufacturers other than General Motors and Ford, often for no better reason that once upon a time some model made by that company used Dexron/Mercon.

For example, Valvoline claims in its promotional materials that its DEX-MERC MaxLife ATF is "recommended for use in GM, Ford, Mazda, Toyota, Chrysler, and most import vehicles." Notice they omitted the word "all." If you put MaxLife into a vehicle that is supposed to be using Dexron VI or Mercon LV, you have voided the warranty on the transmission. Moreover, this Valvoline ATF is essentially a version of the old Dexron III and Mercon ATFs. Since 1998, Chrysler has been using a synthetic ATF, either ATF+4 or ATF+5, which Chrysler specifically says is not compatible with either Dexron or Mercon. Valvoline’s ads claim this fluid is “recommended” for Chrysler products. However, Valvoline’s own “product data sheet” (the data sheet produced for every motor oil and ATF giving its specifications, which can be found on the petroleum company’s website) says that this ATF is recommended for GM vehicles, (which use Dexron III), and Ford products (using Mercon) and does not claim this fluid is recommended for any Chrysler product, much less GM products using Dexron VI or Fords requiring Mercon LV.

Other petroleum companies also make overbroad claims for their multi-vehicle ATFs. Quaker State says their Multi-Vehicle ATF is "recommended" for Chrysler, Honda/Acura, Toyota, Nissan, VW/Audi, BMW, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Mercedes-Benz, Saturn, and Jeep vehicles and "suitable" for many more, including GM vehicles and Ford vehicles. But the product data sheet for that ATF makes no mention of BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, or Mercedes-Benz, or Saturn. Instead, the product data sheet lists primarily applications that use either Dexron III or Mercon V. Most BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Audi vehicles don’t use Dexron/Mercon type fluids. Believing the advertising could be a very expensive mistake.

Even product data sheets can provide questionable information. Fina’s product data sheet for its "Dexron-III/Mercon ATF" says it is recommended for "all late model GM...Chrysler and most imported car...automatic transmissions, as well as, (sic) those in Ford vehicles that call for a Mercon fluid." But, again, a fluid compatible with Dexron III or Mercon is not going to be compatible with Chrysler ATF+4 or ATF+5, nor will it be proper for either Dexron VI or Ford LV vehicles. The product data sheet is simply wrong.

 

[CrazyCooter]

I think part or the problem is everyone has their hand out every step of the way. Most of Amsoil's motor oil products aren't API certified......only the cheap ones. My understanding is that there is testing and a licensing fee to put that API cert on the bottle of oil and also if the oil exceeds the API rating, it cant get the cert.

Most manufacturers say in the manual that you must use an API certified oil. I can understand that requirement to protect them from a person putting in the cheepest gas station oil that literally just says "OIL" on it, but something that exceeds those API standards should be OK to use. This is why I sell people that are under warranty the cheaper "OE" synthetic oils so I don't look like the bad guy later for voiding thier warranty in case of failure.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

What? Where'd you hear that bit about not getting certified if you exceed? Sorry, bunk. Look at exactly what they do for the testing.
If you do a bit better, you have met the requirements.

You must meet or exceed. I don't know how you could JUST meet and not risk exceeding minimums. And that's what those ratings are - minimums. If you do better, you get certified. Otherwise all oils would have to have the exact same chemistry, not a range. Just finished reading up on the API cert process and into the ATF versions.

Here's an example (API uses regular testing labs, companies that specialize in various tests)
In this case, a sample is sent to one of those labs:
-----
Southwest takes an engine—in this case, a Ford four-cylinder—and tests for the conditions that produce LSPI.

“There are pressure transducers that are installed to measure the pressure inside the combustion chamber,” Lochte says.

The engine is run to simulate a heavy load. Lochte says that the exhaust manifold glows red. The measurements should be able to register any premature ignitions that create LSPI, and Lochte says the tests create massive amounts of data in real time.

To meet the latest standards, Lochte says that an engine with the sample oil must have no more than five LSPI events per 170,000 engine cycles.
------
So, if there are no LSPI events, they have exceeded the requirements, right?


Another test -


To measure oil properties, the best way to conduct a test is to fire up a brand new engine, which is what Southwest does to test for oxidation. The engine is run really hot for a long time.

Run for 90 hours, the engine is taken apart at the end. It is rated for piston deposits. It could be carbon and varnish that could be on the pistons.

So what if there are no deposits? They've exceeded the standards, right?

There's no such thing as exceeding - internet lore.
All of the info on testing is out there, including the certification fee - $5,500

 

[Maximus Gladius]

PUBLIC LETTER TO AMSOIL

ZF Manufacture voids my transmission warranty for using AMSOIL

Hello ****, I am sure you’ve been caught up to speed with FCA voiding my transmission warranty after FCA engineers confirmed with the ZF manufacturer that ZF does not approve of the transmission specifications AMSOIL publishes therefore AMSOIL is not in compliance and AMSOIL lost my warranty.

This is not about my transmission malfunction, this is about AMSOIL publishing a data sheet stating ‘use AMSOIL if the below specifications are required’ and that not only confirming with my rep but also rep confirmed with AMSOIL tech support, along with provided AMSOIL data sheet confirming the Fuel-Efficient ATF was in compliance and safe to use in my 850RE 8 speed auto but said specification numbers should not have been posted if there was certainty the ZF manufacturer was not on board and user of said oil would void my warranty. Your data sheet also fails to provide a disclaimer that the use of this oil for the specifications I required would void my warranty, because had there been, I would not have used it and I would have stuck with the factory ZF Mopar 8/9 Speed ATF oil and had the transmission replaced under my secured warranty back in January 2022.

AMSOIL owes me a transmission because AMSOIL lost my warranty and did not have the authorization of the ZF manufacturer to use your oil. Also, AMSOIL can not claim “warranty secure” and then walk away from this. AMSOIL may not have caused the destruction to my transmission but they destroyed my warranty and this corporation needs to accept my filing a claim to replace the transmission.

This story is already causing a stir publicly in Canada and the US and it’s not my fault AMSOIL made the decisions they did to publish a deceptive data sheet stopping short of full disclosure cautions to the public consumer and walking away from my case to have me fight this on my own and defend AMSOIL.

I await your responsible response.
Kevin

 

[ShadowsPapa]

PUBLIC LETTER TO AMSOIL

ZF Manufacture voids my transmission warranty for using AMSOIL

Hello ****, I am sure you’ve been caught up to speed with FCA voiding my transmission warranty after FCA engineers confirmed with the ZF manufacturer that ZF does not approve of the transmission specifications AMSOIL publishes therefore AMSOIL is not in compliance and AMSOIL lost my warranty.

This is not about my transmission malfunction, this is about AMSOIL publishing a data sheet stating ‘use AMSOIL if the below specifications are required’ and that not only confirming with my rep but also rep confirmed with AMSOIL tech support, along with provided AMSOIL data sheet confirming the Fuel-Efficient ATF was in compliance and safe to use in my 850RE 8 speed auto but said specification numbers should not have been posted if there was certainty the ZF manufacturer was not on board and user of said oil would void my warranty. Your data sheet also fails to provide a disclaimer that the use of this oil for the specifications I required would void my warranty, because had there been, I would not have used it and I would have stuck with the factory ZF Mopar 8/9 Speed ATF oil and had the transmission replaced under my secured warranty back in January 2022.

AMSOIL owes me a transmission because AMSOIL lost my warranty and did not have the authorization of the ZF manufacturer to use your oil. Also, AMSOIL can not claim “warranty secure” and then walk away from this. AMSOIL may not have caused the destruction to my transmission but they destroyed my warranty and this corporation needs to accept my filing a claim to replace the transmission.

This story is already causing a stir publicly in Canada and the US and it’s not my fault AMSOIL made the decisions they did to publish a deceptive data sheet stopping short of full disclosure cautions to the public consumer and walking away from my case to have me fight this on my own and defend AMSOIL.

I await your responsible response.
Kevin

Don't let them fall back to the Magnuson-Moss act - they have it very wrong. Their legal department needs to read the whole act, specifically the parts I pointed out.
Everyone keeps tossing that act out like they've actually read it word-for-word and completely understand it. It keeps getting brought up as if it's the internet answer to issues - someone saw it somewhere and hey, there's a low so instead of digging, they keep tossing the name like saying "I happen to know so-and-so personally". Name dropping.
Looks like AMSOIL has done the same............

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