Is it still possible to buy a clocked car?

Zandoni

In these days where you can check the cars mileage by MOT history and electronic service records, is it still possible to buy a clocked car?

Archie_Duke

Certainly it is, withe the right device and a chunk of miles taken off before it’s MOT.

Zandoni

Archie_Duke said:

Certainly it is, withe the right device and a chunk of miles taken off before it’s MOT.

It would need to be done every year though after the first MOT.

Would a car dealer who was selling a used car older than three years be able to do it?

facade

Zandoni said:

It would need to be done every year though after the first MOT.

Would a car dealer who was selling a used car older than three years be able to do it?

They can't rewrite history, so clocking it back to a lower mileage than the last MOT would be obvious.

I wouldn't expect a dealer to be clocking a car anyway, more likely the owner before sale.

"mileage correction" used to be quite popular, but with mileage recorded at services as well as MOTs it is easier to detect.

Devices that "cheat" the mileage as you go along, by "forgetting" half of it, used to be quite popular with a certain minority of leasers/PCP owners, who would take out a lease/PCP based on a tiny annual mileage and use "cheat" devices to keep the mileage down

I believe that manufacturers of the premium brands have tried to make it easier to detect if one of these devices has been used by interrogating the car's ecu.

In The Olden Days you could whip the speedo out and roll the mileage back in a few minutes, I had a colleague who used to roll back most of the mileage he put on in a year just before the MOT, I couldn't see the point, as the car looked like it was high mileage despite the mileometer reading

The answer to the question is yes, it is possible to buy a clocked car, although it is much easier to find out it has been clocked, preferably before purchase.

oh_really

My car went for its first MOT with almost 100K on the clock, that would have been the time to clock it and no-one would have been any the wiser.

motorguy

oh_really said:

My car went for its first MOT with almost 100K on the clock, that would have been the time to clock it and no-one would have been any the wiser.

Assuming it had never been to a main dealer for a service, then yes.

Also, the mileage is stored in various places in the car, not just in the dash display.  It'll be stored in maybe up to have a dozen ECUs in the car, as well as sometimes even in the key (BMW do that).

So relatively easy still to change the dash reading, very hard to remove all evidence of clocking.

motorguy

Zandoni said:

Archie_Duke said:

Certainly it is, withe the right device and a chunk of miles taken off before it’s MOT.

It would need to be done every year though after the first MOT.

Would a car dealer who was selling a used car older than three years be able to do it?

They'd be able to do it, but very foolish if they did.

With almost all cars theres some sort of audit trail in the purchase history.  So either the dealer will have taken it as a trade in or bought it from auction there will likely be proof of mileage existing.

The real risk lies in a dealer accepting a trade in or buying a car that has been clocked, not detecting that and then selling it on.  That then becomes very problematic for everyone when it is picked up.

jimjames

Zandoni said:

In these days where you can check the cars mileage by MOT history and electronic service records, is it still possible to buy a clocked car?

It absolutely is. Some people don't check mileage, there was a post just yesterday. I sold a car a few years back and saw the mileage was 100k lower some months later when the MOT was done.

If you really mean, is it easy to buy a clocked car? Then the answer is yes but much harder since MOTs were available online and some cars are done before MOT is first carried out