I was at my nearest (not quite local) MINI dealer, and I was asking the guys in the service dept. about their experience concerning the failure rate of the DPSM system. Not a single one of them had ever even heard of this system!! Needless to say, they couldn't answer any of my questions about it.

BUT, they did mention that it would be like 5 hours labor for them to install it (!) and that if I were to install it myself there would be no warrantee honored should any of it's components fail (!!)...even if I buy the kit from them...even if I bring the failed part(s) in myself... WTF, IS THIS TRUE? The combination of costs would make it, uhmmm, prohibitive, to say the least.

 

Of course.... Why would they honor a warranty of an item that might have been installed incorrectly? DPSM was also a very short lived item which is why they probably never heard of it.

 

You mean it's no longer available at all?

 

I think all mini parts sold by one particular mininparts supplier, Penske parts, have a 2 year warrenty, nonmatter who installs them.
I am surprised to hear there there are still a few DSPM kits, uninstalled floating around...it had a very short life as a product as said above!!

 

My DPSM warranty was honored when it failed; but I do have a very good relationship with my dealership and they know how well I did the install.

I know there are clauses about requiring dealer install. However I suspect there are legal obligations if you wanted to fight a claim.

 

I dunno man!.. Scarse availability (at best), and having to battle to get coverage honored (also, at best), has me leaning pretty heavily against it right now. Besides, even if they did honor covering any failures, what good would it do if there were no replacement parts to be had?

 

Why not just go aftermarket? DPSM was nice, but for the cost you can really put a nice system in. The only way that I would have gone OEM is if it was in the car from the beginning like my HK. Once that dies it is aftermarket for me.

 

I had considered DPSM at one point but the failure reports turned me off. Because of the high price, very, very few DPSM systems have been installed. Yet even with so few installations, a shocking number of failures have been reported in the forums. The DPSM failure rate is very high!

 

Sounds like it would be a classic all-around bad decision at this point, doesn't it? LOL.

 

Unless you are "one of those people" where everything on the car must be OEM (I've read about some folks going to great lengths just to get "mini" oem glass, I think there are better options, which will cost less and be more relilable. That system is pretty rare...so some folks might want it...I look at it's rarity, and believe the "market" decided it was not the right product/price, and folks did other things....and still achieved the same or better results.

 

The main benefit of DPSM is the ease and stealth of installation. But it's deep bass performance is not good enough (hence my subs in GPMINI), and too many people have had failures - it seems as unreliable as the original H/K.

Yes, it's good in GPMINI - but I wouldn't recommend it!