Car clocking, can it be stopped?

cepheus

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Only if the car is being presented for sale.

However, it is not necessary to put sticker on the instrument panel. As long as you tell any prospective purchaser that the mileage is different to that being displayed by the odometer, you will be complying with the law.

In other words there isn't any real law which would be admissable in a court of law, since it would be simply your word against theirs. At the moment is is buyer beware as far as mileage is concerned, they don't even need to sign anything which shows they have checked the mileage against the DVLA database.

With grey imports it opens a whole new can of worms.

fred7777

cepheus wrote: »

Any change in the mileage should require a code from the manufacturer which is then recorded on the vehicle registration database.

Unfortunately this wouldn't work, whatever chip in the system required a code could be reprogrammed or replaced with a chip which didn't require a code and a new buyer would be non the wiser.

cepheus wrote: »

The Mileage can also be recorded on the same database at the service intervals not just the MOTs. If this was made a rule, then it could be the responsibility of the seller to make sure the mileage is correct or else the buyer should be able to demand their money back.

My car is on various databases used by DVLA, Insurance companies and HPI etc if one of these were adapted so the mileage at each MOT was recorded creating a mileage history for the car which a buyer could check it may make it much more difficult to sell a clocked car.

benjus

In all but a few cases I don't really understand the argument about converting from km to miles as a valid reason for changing the reading. How many cars have a mechanical counter these days? And if it's a digital counter, it's a severe design flaw if it can't be switched to read in either.

cepheus

fred7777 wrote: »

Unfortunately this wouldn't work, whatever chip in the system required a code could be reprogrammed or replaced with a chip which didn't require a code and a new buyer would be non the wiser.

My car is on various databases used by DVLA, Insurance companies and HPI etc if one of these were adapted so the mileage at each MOT was recorded creating a mileage history for the car which a buyer could check it may make it much more difficult to sell a clocked car.

I suppose the chip would have a one time pad system which could be checked to conform to the number the manufacturer has for validity. I agree there is no need for all this disaggregation, it's another scam and should be free to all.

Lum

benjus wrote: »

In all but a few cases I don't really understand the argument about converting from km to miles as a valid reason for changing the reading. How many cars have a mechanical counter these days? And if it's a digital counter, it's a severe design flaw if it can't be switched to read in either.

Depends where the car comes from. I was thinking of Japanese imports where they don't have a nearby neighbour that still uses miles. The speedos are also in kilometers only. I suspect an Australian import would be the same, but American and Canadian cars would have both.

The standard trick for conversion is you buy a little box that you splice into the wire from the speed sensor which reduces the indicated speed by about 5/8ths (or in the case of my 18 yr old Nissan, a little gearbox on the end of the speedo cable). You then get a black marker pen and scribble out the k in kmph.

This has the nasty side effect of altering how the odometer reads, so if you want a genuine reading you'd need to reprogram it at this point to convert the existing kilometers into miles.

I just left mine in kilometers to avoid the whole problem.

SailorSam

I normally only have a very low mileage and have always kept all my old Mots to show any buyers when i come to change cars.

rev_henry

cepheus wrote: »

In other words there isn't any real law which would be admissable in a court of law, since it would be simply your word against theirs. At the moment is is buyer beware as far as mileage is concerned, they don't even need to sign anything which shows they have checked the mileage against the DVLA database.

With grey imports it opens a whole new can of worms.

You can get the seller to sign a bit of paper saying 'mileage genuine' or whatever, then you're covered...

cyclonebri1

SailorSam wrote: »

I normally only have a very low mileage and have always kept all my old Mots to show any buyers when i come to change cars.

But as I said earlier, how does anyone, (or even you unless you bought new), know how many miles the car did in the 1st 3 years under the present system.

It could be stopped in it's tracks with a 2 minute annual MOT station mileage login to the vosa computer?????

Lum

If you think about it, due to the speedometer overread (see the satnav vs speedo thread) and the fact that this is tied to the odometer, no car has a genuine mileage anyway, most of them will be too high.

jase1

Has to be said that we are living in 2011 now. It surely can't be that much of a ball-ache to design an odometer/speedo combination that can be flicked over from MPH to KPH and back at the flick of a switch?