Digital Odometer: Checking For Odometer Rollback
If you’re like most people, when you begin shopping for a used vehicle you’re looking for a good deal. A low mileage car or truck for a low price. What you don’t want though, is a low mileage vehicle at a reasonable price that in all actuality is a high mileage vehicle that has a false reading on the dashboard. So then just how do unscrupulous sellers manipulate the reading on the odometer? Actually it’s not that difficult to do and doesn’t involve rolling back the little wheels with the numbers on them.
So most folks are surprised to learn that altering the mileage reading on a vehicle is actually a much simpler task. You see, in reality when most fraudsters want to change the readout on their vehicle to a lower number, they simply head on down to the wrecking yard, pull the speedometer out of a car or truck that was totalled early in its life, and then simply change it out with their own. It’s that easy. Or they just buy a new speedometer.
So for the untrained eye, detected odometer fraud is not as easy as it may seem on the surface. Particularly if the person whose done it was careful and was determined that their alteration not is detected. Even so, for the determine used car buyer there are “little red flags” that can be found to give away clues that something just isn’t right. So then just what are these little clues that you should look for when you’re out shopping for a pre-owned vehicle?
Now the first thing on your checklist to look for really doesn’t require any snooping around all. It’s a used vehicle, particularly in older model that has a “ridiculously low” number of miles showing on the odometer. Now don’t be mistaken here because low mileage is in fact a good thing to look for when you’re out shopping. However, an extremely low mileage reading should give you cause for concern, and call for a more close-up look at the vehicle.
So the next step is to give a vehicle an internal inspection where you examine key areas that get worn as a vehicle is driven, and the first one is the driver’s side door armrest. How much surface wear is it showing as compared to what’s on the dashboard odometer? Then check out the steering wheel to see how much wear the driver’s hands have made on it. Brake, clutch, and gas pedals also get worn as a car is driven, as does the carpeting below them.
Then one last thing to check for is to see if the dashboard has been removed because there’s very rarely a reason for doing this, other than replacing the speedometer. So scoot the front seat back and then climb in on the front floor so you can examine up under the dashboard to see if the screws have removed. Are any missing? Are there scratches on the screws or on the area around them? Are any mismatched?
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