rolling miles back (1 Viewer)

[njfzj80]

I personally dealt with what I concluded to be a "roll back " incident. A year ago I found a 97 LC in a used car dealership. The add stated that the truck had 45,683 original miles. When I took it for a test drive the odometer read 45,000. I told the "used car salesman" during the drive that the mileage was listed differently in the add. He claimed that when they list them, they just approximate the mileage. But it seems that a number like 45,000 would be pretty easy to remember. So when I got back I decided to leave a deposit and sleep on it. In the meantime we wrote up a contract, but I didn't sign it. I took a copy home to look over. That night I noticed that he made up another mileage on the contract. So I called him and questioned the "new" mileage. He asked me what the contract read and I made up my own mileage...I told him 45,565. when I got there the next day the mileage read 45,574...just enough over so that he could claim we drove the extra miles on the test drive. I told him to rip up the contract. The owner came out because he saw what was going on. I told him that yesterday the truck had 45,000 miles on it. All he said was "Sir I can assure you that no one drove this vehicle 500 miles in the last 24 hours." I said, "I agree" and left.

unfortunately just because it's a felony doesn't mean it doesn't happen. They're making too much money off this scam to care.

All I can say is trust your gut.

 

[NorCalDoug]

I haven't done my speedo correction gear yet.. so for like the past 30k miles for every 100 miles I've really gone what, 106? (295 75 16). crap I owe like 1800 miles, now I'll never get to sleep.

I owe even more -- with the 315s it's 10 miles per every 100 for me. Uh...I'll make sure to drive it long enough after I regear so everything will balance out...yeah...that's the ticket...

 

[PKP80]

PDoyle brings up a good point. How many cruisers for sale out there have modified odometers? Probably not many, but at least a few. I saw one two weeks ago that was bbbad. Saw the ad in the paper, a 96 with 70k mi. I didn't have a VIN before going out to see it so I couldn't CarFax it. It was advertised as blue, but when I got there I saw it was green. Not a good sign if the seller doesn't even know the color of his truck. Anyways, it was obvious by the looks of this truck (ext,int,eng) that it had closer to 170k mi. on the ODO. Several body panels and the firewall had been repainted, it was really bad. Just for kicks I got the VIN and ran a CarFax on it and CarFax had no data on the vehicle, scary.

I wouldn't jump the gun on that, I have a 96 and it only has 80K on it. I personally don't think LC's are really in need of having to have ODO turned back, I'd expect that on other cars, but maybe I'm just being bias.

 

[NovaFZJ80]

I'm sure Pdoyle's post wasn't to say it was okay to do, but to be aware of the low mileage 10+ yr LC's we are seeing....i'm sure the smaller dealerships do it to a few high mileage cars..heck, i can go to the junkyard and buy a totalled civic's odometer for $50 and put it in mine.

With the vehicles i owned, i always wrote in the back of the service manual, date/mileage and type of service that i did...that way the next owner know's the maintenance history on my vehicle..but as far as dealerships, they probably trash any service records and keep just the service manual ?

Some of those out in the import scene will even go the extra and order a odometer from Japan to get the JDM looking odometers, which are different looking than the USDM ones.....but they are listed only in KMs and not like here MPH/KMH...

 

[santiagol]

With cruisers, it is considered an honor to have a lot of miles - most cars are wrecks by the time they rack up the milage that is common in this forum.

BTW, that is a dipstick in CDan avatar's hand, he just checks the oil every now and then.

 

[CreeperSleeper]

Crap... speedo cable on my Jetta broke about a year ago... I probably owe around 8000 miles.

 

[ginericLC]

Up to 30% of cars are reported to have had some sort of odometer problem whether it is failure to repair or intentional on the PO.

I had a Cruiser that had the odometer rolled. It wasn't that big of deal to me because I looked at the condition and decided I wanted it. The mileage was irrelevant to me. On the older ones I've owned I've never known if it was 76k, 176k, 276k or even more.

Anything over 10 years old is exempt from Odometer readings. The government figures that after 10 years there is a higher likelihood of an odometer problem.

So any 40s you could do whatever you want with the odometer. Plus most of the 40s you can't CarFax because they didn't have 17 digit VINs. You can fill out the title any way you want and it doesn't matter because it will still come up exempt on the title for the new owner.

Mercedes does something cool to their vehicles. If you order a speedometer from them they request the current mileage of the vehicle and then a metal VIN like odometer plate is installed in the door.

I think if I did a ground up I'd get an odometer set at zero. Just for myself. My friend did this to his Scout. Everything except the body and frame were new on it when it was done. It only seemed fitting to install a new odometer.

 

[archie]

you will know from the condition of the vehicle whether it was used often enough to warrant the mileage(seats,brake pedal, rust, etc....), But the best way you can tell is ask for the service records, every time they bring a vehicle into the shop,even for tires, the number of miles is recorded on the invoice.
Ask the owner first how long he has owned the vehicle first and then ask for the records. This way you can catch him lying. Ask him a yes or no question like " Has the birfields been repacked recently and then check underneath. The more you catch the person lying the more you should not buy the vehicle.
Good records should be the best indicator of any vehicles value.