People selling clocked cars - busted! Update 2.

Caporegime
OP
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
37,804
Location
block 16, cell 12
Why not message them and mention the MOT history - see if the sale advert gets pulled / updated with the correct info or if it's still live in a few days with the wrong mileage.

They may well be the victim as well - sold a car with a dodgy history and don't know about the past.

Theres s lot of car clocking and mis sales in oldham where I live.

Id rather they just be arrested tbh.

Screenshot-20200812-235305-Chrome.jpg
 
Soldato
Joined
8 Nov 2006
Posts
22,966
Location
London
Mileage was

2011 - 120k miles
2012 - 121k miles
2013 - 57k miles
2014 - 59k miles

Mileage today in 2020 is 63k

Wheres the error?

When was the last owner change?

Sounds like it has been clocked every year.

Unfortunately you do see ads promoting the idea of doing this every year.
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Jul 2005
Posts
17,615
Location
Bristol
If it's an MR2 turbo (I recall OP was looking at them) it could well have only done 1-2k a year as it's an older and very much a second car and probably only driven on sunny days so I wouldn't jump to conclusions on the short mileage between MOTs, the issue is the mileage dropping 60k. If it were a boring car that would usually get used every day then yes, 1-2k a year would be worrying but in this instance I don't think that aspect is an issue at all.
 
Caporegime
OP
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
37,804
Location
block 16, cell 12
If it's an MR2 turbo (I recall OP was looking at them) it could well have only done 1-2k a year as it's an older and very much a second car and probably only driven on sunny days so I wouldn't jump to conclusions on the short mileage between MOTs, the issue is the mileage dropping 60k. If it were a boring car that would usually get used every day then yes, 1-2k a year would be worrying but in this instance I don't think that aspect is an issue at all.

Its a skyline r33 gtst.

Yeah the 60k mileage drop is a big of a stinger when someone has to take a hit on the car being 130k miles not 60k...
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Aug 2003
Posts
9,799
Location
West Midlands
Saw some people on another forum talking about worries of buying relatively new cars that have had mileage blockers put on them.

Seems this is a thing people buying on limited mileage PCPs or leases are doing to allow them to cover excess miles.

See them brazenly advertised on Facebook and Instagram too.

Pretty sure I read on here at some point that a user had bought a car with X miles from a dealership, but started having age related issues that didn't match the mileage. Full investigation later it was found to have previously had a mileage blocker on.
Scary stuff.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
25 Oct 2002
Posts
31,707
Location
Hampshire
Why not message them and mention the MOT history - see if the sale advert gets pulled / updated with the correct info or if it's still live in a few days with the wrong mileage.

They may well be the victim as well - sold a car with a dodgy history and don't know about the past.
Given how trivial it is to check MOT history (literally public website with no login required or anything) these days you could argue a dealer who doesn't undertake those most basic of steps is missing a trick. They could be saying to whomever sold them the car, look guys it's got a dodgy history, I'm going to struggle to shift this so you'll have to knock £xxx off the price. I'm not that naive to think dealers spend hours picking over the history of every p/x that comes their way in the way that a private buyer would, but it's literally a 30s job. Presumably something like a Nissan Skyline is going to be attracting a more specialist type of buyer anyway who might be interested in the history, compared to a clapped out Fiesta or whatever?
 
Caporegime
OP
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
37,804
Location
block 16, cell 12
Given how trivial it is to check MOT history (literally public website with no login required or anything) these days you could argue a dealer who doesn't undertake those most basic of steps is missing a trick. They could be saying to whomever sold them the car, look guys it's got a dodgy history, I'm going to struggle to shift this so you'll have to knock £xxx off the price. I'm not that naive to think dealers spend hours picking over the history of every p/x that comes their way in the way that a private buyer would, but it's literally a 30s job. Presumably something like a Nissan Skyline is going to be attracting a more specialist type of buyer anyway who might be interested in the history, compared to a clapped out Fiesta or whatever?

Well yeah and the average price for a gtst is about 8k so then selling for 13k is based upon condition/low miles...but as i say one with 130k miles is probably worth 7k or less...
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Jun 2005
Posts
13,958
If you have the right equipment it is supposedly very easy to clock electronic mileage. I worry it happens a lot with newer cars, which haven't hit their first MOT. And even with the MOTs, lot of people wouldnt bother to check.
i imagine theres some good blackmarket money to be made by people doing it on lease cars with maximum mileages
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Nov 2006
Posts
23,304
You get it a lot on classics, or more basic cars where the miliage is only stored in the dash. Then the dash cluster breaks and has to be replaced. Obviously the seller has to let buyers know the true mileage or its fraud.

On a modern, run of the mill car though... Run away unless they are upfront about it and have a good reason.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
19 Dec 2002
Posts
2,001
nope if it was 121000 km adjusted to miles is roughly 75000 apart from clocking only other reasonable excuse again should really be supported in the paperwork is either a second hand uk dash or if converted maybe a dash dump from another uk car used completely to keep the checksum.
have to come clean used to speak to a friend in southampton who worked for a importer and they regularly converted all sorts of wierd and wonderful cars ,and some of the problems they had would make your hair turn grey , but they got around most . i was lucky at the time used to do radio decoding when dashboards started up so managed to avoid getting into it.
 
Soldato
Joined
25 May 2008
Posts
3,738
Location
North Wales
Interesting stuff, i know when i had my Honda Integra DC5 there was always murmurings of quite a few of them having mileage haircuts before each MOT to maintain their value. At the time there was quite a lot around being daily driven but hardly any had any kind of substantial mileage on them which seemed very suspicious.

People posting about having 100 mile commutes and their car being daily driven and still seemingly doing only 2k a year..

I think as they were all imported and millage corrected they were quite easy to change even though it was a digital odometer.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Apr 2014
Posts
18,532
Location
Aberdeen
I found a nice car with 60k miles on the clock but I did a mot check history on it and it lost 50k miles in 2013...

Many years ago the mileometer in one of my old cars stopped working, so I had to have it replaced. The garage that replaced it wouldn't set the new mileometer to the old mileometer reading. So I had an old car with zero miles on the clock!
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Sep 2005
Posts
16,526
Ford did this to our old Focus. The dials had water damage so got replaced. The mileage dropped down to 0 miles lol. They told us not to worry about it.
 
Back
Top Bottom