Any way of telling genuine mileage on modern cars

[qwakers]

What with?

MaxiSYS Ultra - Autel UK

www.autel.uk

or similar

 

[AVI_8]

Buy a brand new car and watch it click the mileage up - is the only foolproof method.

Any/everythign else can be flashed up (trust me on this).

I’ll take my chances, £600 per month for a car you hand back after 3 years and start again is beyond my level of comprehension.

 

[premmington]

I’ll take my chances, £600 per month for a car you hand back after 3 years and start again is beyond my level of comprehension.

And me mate. Renting (PHP) looks a losers game to me.

 

[Memmeddu]

ECU usually has a mileage data
Body computer usually has mileage data
HUD computer has for sure mileage data
Is very unlikely that someone goes through all of them to reduce the mileage ,it might work only on the HUD.
My car has a deterrent strategy
If you swap ECU the HUD will flash the mileage value
As same if you swap the HUD or the body computer.
My car is 23 years old , I think newer ones are better protected against mileage scams.

Here in Italy registration has the mileage at the last MOT test written on it .
Surely a company who does those tests can have access to the history of the vehicle and from there find out if the mileage is reasonable plausible or not
If in 2020 my car had 214000 km , and in 2022 had 234k it's unlikely that in 2024 it will have 230k .

Although mileage is not a good meter to know the car conditions.
I can drive 100000km without stressing the engine and components at all .
My brother's car an Audi A4 B4 Avant 1.9 TDCI 130kW , which is actually the car I'm currently using, speeds up to 60km/h at idle in sixth gear
I can drive it all day long without even get the coolant temperature rise up .
I can drive it full send too .
The wear on the engine and transmission is way different.
Oil and filters changes, maintenance make the difference too.
City drive cause more wear on components than in the highway.
Road conditions play an important role too .
Three identical car (model , engine ,specs etc) can have both 20k miles for example , one has been always neglected in maintenance and fixed prior selling , one has always been driven full send , and the last one had a lovely owner who took care of it with constant maintenance and driving it reasonable without even loading the engine .

They look identical , perfect body panels,paint interiors, same mileage, they are clean etc
Which one you are picking up?
I bet the last one.
I think I've managed to get to the point.
Mileage, and age doesn't matter

 

[AVI_8]

Mileage, and age doesn't matter

It does matter if you’re paying three grand more than average because it’s got 30,000 miles instead of 70,000 miles then to find out it’s been clocked from 80,000 miles especially on a car which will likely have been driven in a very spirited fashion with 20,000 mile service intervals, personally oil and filters are a cheap good insurance policy, I service mine every 5000 miles

 

[premmington]

It does matter if you’re paying three grand more than average because it’s got 30,000 miles instead of 70,000 miles then to find out it’s been clocked from 80,000 miles especially on a car which will likely have been driven in a very spirited fashion with 20,000 mile service intervals, personally oil and filters are a cheap good insurance policy, I service mine every 5000 miles

I will repeat "oil changes are cheaper than engine changes".

 

[sg66]

I’ll take my chances, £600 per month for a car you hand back after 3 years and start again is beyond my level of comprehension.

You could just buy it.

Even a paper trail is no guarantee, if it matches what ever is recorded at the time we'll it's going to look fine, but it may not be..

I know several places that do services/MOT/ECU/odometer repairs

Unless you've owned it from new there is no telling for sure, use your eyes and see if mileage matches wear and tear, service record, wheel bearings, bushes bla bla bla, all things we learnt when you couldn't trust anyone.

I've just had 2 new tyres put on my van at 76k miles not bad for a pair of tyres, I've replaced them with the same as they lasted so long, or did they ?

Yes they did btw

 

[Dozzer]

until recently consulted for large car makers in engine design, and have been involved with cars/vehicles most of my life, sadly if someone has the right access codes and knowledge you can rewrite any ecu, have VCDS for VAG vehicles and can get up to all sorts of mischief with ecu values.

on expensive vehicles that flash the data to a new ecu, there are firms that can change out chips in any ecu. if it adds £10k to a car for 2k to get a mileage correction company is worth it. i know that JLR, BMW and Vauxhall had their BDM codes stolen/sold (BDM = background debugging mode) and some firms were selling the BDM board interfaces. its big business.

Most common one is as others have pointed out is mileage inhibiter, normally giving false PWM signal to the ECU, some are smart enough to give speedo reading but not add any miles to system.

 

[Nomad]

It's become a massive issue with ex Police cars, they have no legal requirement for an MOT. One of our local auction houses deals sell a lot of them and some forces get them MOTd for the auction but some know full well that they will make more money if there is no history. There have been cars appearing on small forecourts with 30-40K that went through the auction with 100K <more>

The thing with police cars has been public knowledge for many years, including that they have no checkable service history.

Police forces know they devalue the car at auction if they mot it before sale as it's then not possible to clock the mileage back. Sadly most forces prefer to sell for the highest price rather than mot it and prevent the fraud.

Carefully worded so I don't include any political or personal opinions.

 

[premmington]

The thing with police cars has been public knowledge for many years, including that they have no checkable service history.

Police forces know they devalue the car at auction if they mot it before sale as it's then not possible to clock the mileage back. Sadly most forces prefer to sell for the highest price rather than mot it and prevent the fraud.

Carefully worded so I don't include any political or personal opinions.

Sell it at three years old - defleet it - auction it off without an MOT.

New owner never gets a service book - low mileage car - one owner "ben hur". Never raced or rallied - one lady owner!

It not a crime - it is just - good use of the tax payers money. Unless you the tax payer that buys it from a sales reptile - that bought it from the auction.

This comes from the same people who wanted to knick the old lady postmistress near me and sent her to an early grave for a software error they would not own up to....

 

[Munkul]

No point being scared about miles.
Condition is everything IMO.
Only be scared if the service history doesn't tally up properly, if its missing a significant chunk of miles then there's no way the servicing will be right. If it's really wrong, it'll be fairly evident in the condition, stone chips, etc.
I don't think the majority of people have clocking the milage on their minds therefore the majority of cars will be just fine.
Plus, you can buy a lemon of a car regardless of clocked miles or not...

 

[bricol]

Don't forget covid lockdown will have reduced mileage on some - my boss's company Audi A1 is on silly low mileage for a 3 yr old car as it didn't go anywhere for a long time.

 

[iNf]

I've just had 2 new tyres put on my van at 76k miles not bad for a pair of tyres,

Had 2 new front tyres fitted to my van at work with the same mileage, apart from there was a fullstop between the 7 and 6

 

[sg66]

Had 2 new front tyres fitted to my van at work with the same mileage, apart from there was a fullstop between the 7 and 6

Buy better tyres or slow down, I chose better tyres

 

[iNf]

Buy better tyres or slow down, I chose better tyres

It's more that it's an EV and start stop several hundred times a day 6-7 days/week

 

[Pete.]

Sell it at three years old - defleet it - auction it off without an MOT.

New owner never gets a service book - low mileage car - one owner "ben hur". Never raced or rallied - one lady owner!

It not a crime - it is just - good use of the tax payers money. Unless you the tax payer that buys it from a sales reptile - that bought it from the auction.

This comes from the same people who wanted to knick the old lady postmistress near me and sent her to an early grave for a software error they would not own up to....

It might not be a crime but the last people you would expect to be knowingly facilitating the subsequent crime is law enforcement.

They KNOW that they get the best price by selling the motor without MOT and the only reason for that is the untracability of the mileage for the common person. If fact it's worse than that - being the previous owners they will have perfect records of the vehicle's mileage and the best means to trace any susequent alteration. They are actually the people charged with the responsibility of investigating fraudulent crimes but they don't do it because it would inevitably result in criticism of themselves putting financial benefit ahead of crime prevention for want of such a simple thing as putting a current MOT test on a vehicle.

 

[sg66]

It's more that it's an EV and start stop several hundred times a day 6-7 days/week

Like my van, but without the EV bit, it is pretty much 3t constantly though.

 

[Morrisman]

Buy it new

How would you know it actually new though? Wind the clock back, new tyres, give it a good shot of 'new car smell' air freshener, and nobody would know.

 

[Gavlar]

Seems they've made them easier to clock than 30 years ago..

Same with Keyless Entry, made them far easier to steal.

30 years ago they would wind back the odo with a drill, the odo was the only place on the car mileage was recorded and there was no simple way to check the mileage on previous MOTs. At least now it tends to be recorded on multiple systems and is in the public domain once the car is MOT'd.

30 years ago you could open and start a Ford (and many others) with a screwdriver or a penny.

Fact is, it doesn't matter what systems are in place, dishonest people will find a workaround and someone will try and tell you' it was better when I was a lad.'

 

[Memmeddu]

It does matter if you’re paying three grand more than average because it’s got 30,000 miles instead of 70,000 miles then to find out it’s been clocked from 80,000 miles especially on a car which will likely have been driven in a very spirited fashion with 20,000 mile service intervals, personally oil and filters are a cheap good insurance policy, I service mine every 5000 miles

That's the point of my post , mileage doesn't matter .
There's a big difference between an well maintained engine and a neglected engine even if they have the same mileage.
I'd rather go for an 80.000km well maintained car as might be yours (5K miles oil changes) than a 50.000km one which has never seen an oil change