marinetowing

Yep it was mine, done zero work. Was a pte RB turbo purchased from a Garret stand at summernats over 10 years ago for close to 3K, sat in a box unfitted for many years and as mentioned has done minimal work.

Scott i understand that you are pissed but complaining about a set $100 brake pads is a bit over kill...

Ummm did I stutter when I mentioned the rotors were fucked as well?.........yeah bit of overkiill complaining about that on a brand new car, little bit more than $100 to fix also, you being part of the countries dodgiest service division should be well aware of that.

A word of warning to anyone considering purchasing an Mitsubishi MN Triton

I purchased a MY10 GXL-R manual triton in early January last year brand new from a Hobart dealership, it was my 2nd triton that I have owned since new, buying a MK TD 4wd in 2003.

I use the ute for occassionally towing the car to events and for daily duties.
A couple of weeks before Xmas my wife took the car to the dealership for a 15,000k service, she was told by the service department that the front brake pads were badly worn and the rotors were damaged, which constituted a warranty claim due to the low kilometres and that they had contacted me by phone to inform me of the situation (which they did not do).

I inspected the brakes when the car arrived home and the pads were down to around 1mm of remaining material and the rotors were badly scored and showed signs of hot spots.
I called the dealership first thing Monday morning to be informed that they would submit a warranty claim and let me know the outcome in a day or so, I heard nothing all week so decided to call on Friday afternoon when I was told that MMA required more detail as this was a "unique" incident, my wife took the car back the following week where they photographed the brakes and sent the images of to MMA.

In between this week and the time the photos were sent I have heard nothing from MMA nor the dealership apart from the offer from the dealership to pay for new pads, rotors and fitting at my expence and be reimbursed if the claim was approved, to which I declined.

I called MMA on Tuesday to find out what was going on with the claim, only to be told by some halfwit at the front desk (who refused to let me speak to anyone higher up the foodchain as it was policy) that my claim would be rejected as the items were consumables and this was again a "unique" incident. When I questioned him about the low kilometres and the fact the rotors were also destroyed he replied "yes that's our policy, but I don't exactly know what rotors are" so basically I was accused of mistreating the car, left foot braking and I was wasting my time persuing a claim.

Wednesday I decided to turn up the heat a little and spoke to the dealership manager, explaining that it was probably not in his or MMA's best interest to refuse if they wanted to keep me as a future customer, considering I had bought 2 new vehicles from them and I do buy quite a lot of parts from ralliart for the TME and the GSR, he said he would push the matter and do everything within his power to get a result which would keep everyone happy, but once again mentioned the problem with it not being a common fauly MMA would be reluctant to approve the claim. He assured me that a result would come immediately and I would hear from him the following day (yesterday).

Surprise surprise yesterday came and went and no call from the dealership or MMA, in the meantime I did a bit of searching and found a forum (which has quite a large membership) soley for Triton's 2005 and up, it is also Australian based. I signed up and explained my dillema and instantly I was given links and stories of numerous owners with the exact same issue as mine with the MN model, one particular vehicle was identical with rotor damage at 15,000ks but overall a large percentage of these vehicles had had premature brake wear and it had been reported to dealerships which no doubt would have to brought to MMA's attention.
This problem was so widespread to that model that brake upgrade group buys for MN's were highly recommended on the site, all of the members that replied to my question agreed that it should be a warranty issue and for some reason it appeared that Mitsubishi had somewhat "skimped" for that model and used sub standard pad material.

This morning armed with the above info and feeling somewhat infuriated that MMA had lied to me about not knowing about the issue and that I was the first to make such a complaint, I decided to make a few calls.
First off was the service department manager (this call did not end so well) who informed me that MMA had officially refused my claim at the close of business Thursday night, I proceeded to question him on the info I had received from the other Triton owners to which he said he was not aware of such claims being made, which he may not have but no doubt MMA knew when they were investigating the claim. I asked him in all honesty if he had purchased the vehicle and in that low amount of k's would he be happy with brake component failure and expect to foot the bill himself, to which he told me that he wouldn't but my only option from here was to put in writing a complaint to MMA......as my blood pressure was at Mt St Helens level by now I told him his best option was to go fuck himself and this was far from over, then hung up and moved onto the dealership manager.

The dealership manager is trying a little harder to keep me onside and did mention that he had not heard of the brake wear issue before and would talk to MMA and try and sort out the situation, I informed him that if it was not resolved today and the tables turned in my favour he would not only lose me as a customer to the service dept, new vehicle sales etc I would also do my best to spread the joy on how great the ute is and how wonderful customer care is at MMA. I do tow the car around to a lot of places for events and people often do ask how it performs as a tow vehicle being the new 2.5 model, so it's quite easy to spread a negative if required.

He called me back some time later and said that MMA were standing firm on their decision but as a sign of goodwill the dealership was prepared to have pads and rotors fitted to the car for a cost to me of $200, I informed him that I appreciated the offer but unfortunately I am not prepared to give mitsubishi 1c of my money in order to fit substandard parts to my car and that as a customer he and I were finished and hung up.
.....I have had 8 missed calls from him in the meantime but not quite prepared to talk to him at the moment.

I have just got off the phone to MMA who still refuse to let me speak to anyone higher up the foodchain, the only action I can take apparently is by writing, I told the customer care I will not be writing a letter and that I will continue to call until I can speak to someone who can actually do something for me.
Customer care have just been in contact with the dealership and tell me that the dealership has submitted a claim of "goodwill" to MMA where they will contribute some of the cost of repair towards the car and to seek approval for MMA to pay the remainder of cost, the result I am told will come early next week.

I can get the dba rotor and pad upgrade for around $500 from the other forum, which is no doubt a good thing anyway as obviously the pads that are used for genuine parts are garbage, but it's not the point.
I never once had to put so much as a set of pads in my old triton in 84,000ks and it was used for the same purpose, driven the same way.

I find it astounding that MMA would be prepared to lie to a customer, then risk losing that customer and suffer negative publicity just for a petty set of brakes that were obviously crap and would more than likely not set them back more than a few hundred dollars.

Stay tuned....and yes I will be putting the "THIS CAR IS CRAP, DO NOT BUY ONE" stickers on the ute and parking it outside the dealership if this turns to custard.

Thanks guys, had a great weekend and it was good to catch up with Trav and Nick again (sorry for not being able to stop and chat for as long as I would have liked but these events seem to have you rushing to meet the next checkpoint in time).

A massive thanks to George and his lovely wife for spending the weekend with us and keeping the Evo in tip top shape which allowed us to finish the event without any car problems whatsoever.
My car has been subjected to a lot of changes over the past 6 months, diffs, suspension etc all of which transformed it into a very serious tarmac weapon that I was only just beging to get a feel for towards day 2.
As George mentioned...we destroyed a brand new set of Dunlop 03G's in the 2 day event, the last 3 stages were run with the shoulders on all 4 tyres delaminated and minimal tread depth across the tyres, the car seemed to step the rear a little more but still held off on understeer which is attributed to the new front diff that the car now has.
Sunday was our day to shine and we pushed as hard as we felt comfortable, averaging 6th position for all the stages we competed in, on the 3rd stage we came across a BMW M3 that had come into a corner too hot and left the road straight into a tree, as we were first on the scene we had to remain until the ambulance arrived, fortunately the occupants were ok (which says a huge amount for well constructed cages as this hit was so large that I was initially too scared to look in the car as I thought the driver would have certainly been dead). As there was a number of large offs on this particular stage it took 45 minutes for the medical team to arrive, making us miss the next 2 stages In this situation a derived time is awarded to competitors who miss stages due to such as the above circumstances, this time is supposed to be calculated on you pre stage performance and should reflect the time you would have placed for the stage, our incar footage up to stopping at the incident had us at a time that would have yielded a 5th or 6th position finish, the derived time they gave us actually awarded us with a 10th place finish, although we protested and took our video evidence to be checked (which they did not want to see) the officials were steadfast with the ruling.

Massively stoked with finishing 9th in Early modern although 6th or 7th would have been better if we were not dudded with the derived time! We were just glad the guys in the beemer were ok and if the situation arises again we will stop without hesitation, just next time I will argue our case a little more!
The course was amazing and had a bit of everything, plenty of twisties and some serious high speed sections- on Saturday afternoon on the Hathill stage we recorded a top speed of 230kph and this was in a section of road that had 3 right an 2 left handed corners thrown in the mix to negotiate while the car was in 5th gear with all the red lights on the shiftlight aglow
Road surfaces were also very good in terms of being smooth compared to Tassie although the surface was very abrasive, which we believed was a part of the reason for destroying the tyres.

We will be back next year!
Will post a few pics and vids once I can get motivated to upload them

What sort of price without the tyres?

do you go into your local shops and ask the guys selling stuff how much they paid for it?

Generally no.....but this forum isn't a shop and I find it astounding that you actually think you are going to sell those things for the ridiculous price you have put on them.
Considering this isn't a shop the consumers you will find on here are a little bit wiser as to what things are worth compared to your regular shopper

I have a genuine E3 Front bar in excellent condition with lip,reo and centre mesh.
Also have 3 front guards, 1 of which is brand new, 1 has very slight damage and the other is in good condition, also a set of genuine skirts and glass pods in good condition.

Seeing as these things are getting rare and the last genuine bar sold for a high price in record time, I am looking for, say ...........100 million dollars


As for realistic offers I was hoping for around $1500 for the lot, also as shipping is rather costly for these bulky items I will be heading to Victoria late October and could possibly have room to bring them with me.

ok so it looks like im the only person that would want to win?? haha i know you all want to win regardless of prize. its ok... everyone can just let me drive past so i can win seeing as no one wants to win??? how can you say that no one will be "pushing their cars" what a joke. Give it a rest...

Marulan Driver Training Centre
http://www.mdtc.com.au/

i could prob get a decent deal for this place as my uncle knows the owner and is sponsored by him. For the before proposed 20k we could get the track for 2 weeks lol

No it's not the case at all...it's how you were spraying off about how there would have to be prize money involved before you would worry about making the trip to enter an event in victoria.

Maybe some members of T4g....oops should i say t4gtuner think that i have my back up a little on the matter?
Take a step back a few months and check out the evonats....who do you think was the most dissapointed member of t4g..hmmm fuck me ??? wonder who that was???

After once again all the shit that comes pre nats regarding criteria of entry...i ran an evo tme proudly adorned with t4g stickers front and sides...was there any other rrepresentation from the forum..NO...was I looked upon like a leper from the evooz heirachy-yes ...did I give a fuck?..NO....its amazing how quickly some things no matter how substantial can be forgotten here

I think if this would be to work it would make sense to heed ziad's words and set your sights a little lower for a first event.

Jon have you ever been involved in organising a motorsport event? 200-300 cars is slightly head in the clouds material don't you think?
I follow my local car club fairly closely and have a reasonable idea on the organising nightmare it takes to run a successful hillclim or sprint day which generally caters for a max entry of 45 cars- it is a hell of a lot of work and the numbers you are suggesting are slightly ambitious for (sorry I dont want to be rude or negative) a forum that struggles to get 10 cars turn up at a meet. Meaning that to be successful it will require interstate interest.

The suggestion that Winton is too far away...for who? do you assume that these "300" car of which you speak will all come from the centre of Melbourne?
Winton is a great track, hell I made the trip from Tassie to participate in the Nats and would do it again.
Haunted hills is also a brilliant suggestion, although I have never been there the pics and feedback from people who have make it look like an excellent facility.
You need to consider keeping entry costs as low as possible and providing maximum value for that entry fee as a lot of people will be making the pilgramige from interstate which is generally an expensive task alone without paying a large entry and receiving very little value for it.
Take the Evonats for example which was a very well run event and numbers were capped at a realistic level, the entry fee was similar that of your suggestion a well organised track day was held at a top notch circuit with plenty of runs to keep everyone satisfied, a well catered dinner was included after the track day with relevent guest speakers through the evening and on the sunday there was another motorsport day with the choice of a motokhana course or an unbelievably good short circuit at the deca facility. After tthe events was held I was given a $100 travel subsidy for attending from interstate. That in my eyes is great value for money even after spending $800 alone on getting my car across Bass Strait then paying for fuel,meals and accomodation during the event and I would do it again without hesitation due to the value for money it represented.

The track component of the proposal sounds great but the Sunday with the 300 cars and the $175 fee to have 3 goes at "go to whoa" does not sound like something that would warrant the huge cost of travelling and attending the event, and many interstate people may feel the same way.

Sorry again for sounding negative but as you will be requiring interstate attendants to make up the viable numbers value for money needs to be considered to make the travel cost seem justified.