Sorry I know this has been posted before, but does anyone know how to check the OD to see if it had been rolled back? Some site said you could check for marks on it from diff. tools. (ie: scrapes, dings, scratches..) I realize Carfax is reliable, but I've read loads of complaints from people who've said that Carfax has reported mileage rollbacks when they were never actually done. Is there any lettering or ID number of a sort that would indicate if a speedometer is not the original? When I bought the car, the mileage was shown to be 86,599. Considering the guy I bought it from was a little "shady", I'm a little concerned about the mileage. The only thing I can think of is to order every copy of the title when it changed hands..?

Any ideas/advice would be greatly appreciated. Please dont state Carfax though..


thanks

 

The only way i know of is to remove the cluster and inspect it for signs of previous dissasembly, the speedometer has a piece of plastic holding the numerals together on the odometer it's pretty delicate and usually will show signs of tampering brakage or missadjusted numerals (ones that dont line up correctly) but theirs really no way to be sure if the person doing it is skilled it can be done with out much sign of it ever being done .. the digital dashes are pretty much tamper proof . but im sure there's a way around that also, as for carfax my opinnion is they are worthless on any older car as so much could have happened over time they aren't accurate after a few years and even on newer cars I have seen many errors in reporting mileage and previous crash historys (I worked in a body shop for years) and it was pretty common to see a car that had a bad report that only had minor damage show a major accident afterwords and the people would come to us after and ask why ?

 

Ok, thanks man. I'll take a look at it in the spring. It's in storage now. I'll probably end up ordering copies of the old titles just to see what it was reported at, even though it's most likely pointless.

 

I remember reading someplace (shop manual, perhaps?) that when the odometer is rolled back, these little tell-tale "bars" appear in between the number rollers.

I don't know if this applies to all 3rd Gens, though.

 

Anyone with the right tools and some patience, can set a typical odometer to any mileage in a matter of minutes. I set the odometer in my 91 Firebird to all zeros then later on when I upgraded to a 140mph speedometer I reset it back to 160,000ish.

 

Besides rolling it back it is very easy to just replace the odometer spool from another speedometer without leaving any signs of tampering at all.

I replaced my 110mph speedometer with a 145mph one, but didn't want to change my odometer readings so I place the original odometer in the 145mph speedometer just a couple of weeks ago.

 

When you attempt to reassemble the Odometer the numbers end up half off becqause of the gears, its a tricky process, and Illegal UNLESS you are changing the speedo because its broken. In my case I changed my Odometer and adjusted it to the correct miles BECAUSE the trip Odometer was broken...

JOhn

 

if somone buys a speedo from a lower mileage car, it's next to impossible to know if it was changed, there are signs on them if somone disassembles the original one to change it, but lets not forget if somone disables it inside the speedometer mechanically while the car has low miles. (i've seen it )

and I say carfax is pretty useless, according to them my car didn't exist before 1995 and never had a issue (it had stereo stolen, door kicked in ttop busted out, yeah no problems on my car, it's real accurate

 

lol i just got in trouble at the dealership for rolling mine back...i rolled it back when i got another console, but it wasnt accurate because i didnt wanna break anything so im 30000km off. and the car had been worked on erlier and i brought it in with less milage than it had 3 years ago. the guy behind the computer had never seen that before, i had to tell him some fable about different speedos.

 

This is from the '87 Camaro Owner's Manual, Page 2C-5:



Just from the wording, it might not be the most reliable way to tell if tampering has occurred.

 

I find that hard to believe. All of the 85-89 camaro speedos that I've seen are exactly the same, and certainly do not show any signs of tampering if you mess with them. In fact, it's extremely easy to take the spool out and turn it. I did this when I swapped my 85mph speedo for a 145.

 

what about on a firebird? Same? I think i actually need to add miles to mine, after it stopped counting for some reason..it got stuck for a good 2,000 miles. Anyone wanna give me some tips, lol.

 

I've always wondered how you are supposed to change the odometer. I bought a 145mph unit for my car over a year ago, but it has 173k miles on it and my car only has 65k miles on it. So, if swapping in a new odometer is it legal to "change" it? Most people I talk to just swap in the 145 and don't care about the mileage, but I can't say that I agree with that.

 

I think changing or altering the Oddometer is illegal if it is indented to defraud, but if it's to correct an error in the mileage such as when replacing the speedometer it's OK.

 

ive heard about the silver bars between the numerals when the mileage is tampered with.

when i changed from a 85 mhp speed to a 145, i just took the two speedo's apart and swapped the rollers between the two

 

I've got just about that same issue, cept mine was a 120 to 120 (quit working) and then it stuck for a few thousand miles, so I need to A. adjust to my right mileage so I dont somehow get 35,000 miles added to my cars history the next time I get plates and B. correct for the time it didnt move at all

 

Dont ever trust carfax.

When i bought my RS it had 45,111 miles. it was titled/registered and entered into their database correctly. When i totaled the car, it had 49,xxx miles. We had the 30 day unlimited carfaxes thing one month and i just typed in my RS's vin and it said that the car had odometer fraud... It stated that we bought it with 49,xxx miles and it was totaled with 45,111. How does that happen? I dont know, but i would never trust a carfax again.

 

As far as Carfax & Autocheck go they are only as good as the information entered.

THis is a real car, and this is actual information that I gathered on that car. If you look at car fax, it sais the last reported miles was 25,223... Autocheck sais 76,500... hmmm somethings fishy right?

Odometer reading from AUTO CHECK:
5-15-91 - 2000 miles 1000 miles a year (for 2 years)
5-27-94 - 5000 miles 1000 miles a year (for 3 years)
5-25-95 - 63,000 miles 57,000 miles in one year, thats a lot of driving.
7-29-98 - 76,500 miles 4,500 miles a year ( for 3 years)

SAME car - carfax:
9-08-89 - 36 miles
5-15-91 - 2,000 miles
5-27-94 - 5,000 miles - Everything is fine so far
6-05-98 - 7,679 miles - hmmm
6-12-00 - 17,471 miles
6-05-02 - 21,993 miles
6-06-03 - 22,555 miles
6-10-03 - 22,585 miles
6-12-04 - 24,114 miles
6-12-04 - 24,124 miles
11-13-04 - 25,223 miles.

hmm my first thought was that the odometer had bee rolled back... So I did some comparisons. If you overlay the Carfax & the Autocheck here is what you get:

5-15-91 - 2000 miles --- same
5-27-94 - 5000 miles --- same
5-25-95 - 63,000 miles --- Autocheck
6-05-98 - 7,679 miles ---- CArfax
7-29-98 - 76,500 miles --- Autocheck.
6-12-00 - 17,471 miles --- CARFAX

Looks like the odometer had been rolled back not once but TWICE!!!, If look closer, the Carfax information has something that you do not see in the Autocheck, Carfax has actual miles, down to the single digit. Autocheck on the other hand has simple Generic numbers that are not an accurate number. If you drop off a 0 off of the 2 Autocheck numbers you see that the numbers are actually quite linear when you consider that the Autocheck are generic.

5-15-91 - 2000 miles --- same (1000 miles a year - for past 2 years)- FL
5-27-94 - 5000 miles --- same (1000 miles a year - for past 3 years)- FL
5-25-95 - 6,300 miles --- Autocheck (1000 miles a year - for 1 year)- FL
6-05-98 - 7,679 miles ---- CArfax (500 miles a year - for 3 years) - NY
7-29-98 - 7,650 miles --- Autocheck. - Start of 2nd owner or owner moved to NY
6-12-00 - 17,451 miles --- CARFAX - (5000 miles a year - for 2 years) NY
6-12-04 - 24,124 miles --- CARFAX - (1668 miles per year - for 4 years)

From the information above I believe this car someone has fat fingered the information, Twice, its unfortunate, but its unlikely that the car was driven 57,000 miles in a single year, Thats 1096 miles a week or 219 miles a day (5 day work week), also when it was inconsistant for the owners previous record.

John