Frank_Horrigan

I drive a 2000 Infiniti i30, and having been in it for a while with it's fair share of repairs, I suspect the odometer has been tampered with. This comes from 2 listings at auto auction with the mileage listed at 171,xxx, while the reported mileage is more in the range of 131,xxx now. What I'm wondering is - HOW has the odometer been tampered with, and what am I looking for to provide the smoking gun/silver bullet for this?

Does the entire gauge cluster need to be swapped with one from a lower mileage car? Can a diagnostic tool be hooked up to change the reading on the odometer? Does the CONSULT II tool provide the tools to change the odometer reading, and if it does, is there any way that it stored the previous mileage that can be read in a history? What am I looking for if the entire cluster has been swapped out?

Thanks in advance. Finding something on the cluster itself may make or break the upcoming court case.

DennisMik

iTrader: (2)

If you live in an area where you have state inspections, get a Carfax on the VIN. The report should have the mileage recorded when the inspection was done. This will give you an idea when the discrepancy occurred.

The how and why it happened can only be told by who ever did it. Because the mileage is held in an integrated circuit, you cannot change the mileage very easily unless you have some equipment that was specifically designed to do this. Most likely the instrument cluster was replaced with one from a junkyard.

The Nissan dealer has such equipment. I don't know if the CONSULT can do it or if there is a separate piece of equipment. The only time they are supposed to change the mileage reading would be if they replace the cluster. Any other time/reason would be illegal.

Any registered repair shop can have the equipment if they want to.

I don't know if the original mileage is stored in the integrated circuit as a backup or whatever. If the instrument cluster was replaced, I don't know how you could identify that. There are probably serial numbers on the cluster and the manufacturing process probably recorded those numbers. Nissan has that info back in Japan where the car was assembled, but whether you could get it is unknown.

Frank_Horrigan

Florida fortunately does not have state inspections, so the last official DMV record only goes back to before the car was 10 years old, after which time it's exempt from mileage records. CarFax has a record from a service in 2010 at 121,576 miles. The auction website lists it at auction in June of 2013 at 171,381 miles, and was sold to me with less than 121,800 miles on it in September of 2013, so the roll-back occurred some time in that ~3 month time-frame. The only people that would have had the car in that period of time would be the dealership I purchased it from, some shady used car lot. Unfortunately, at a glance, everything sort of checked out until I Googled the VIN and got an extremely lucky result with the auction site.

I called up a local Nissan dealership, and they told me the only way to change it would be by swapping out the cluster, but I've seen YouTube videos of digital odometers being changed in 5 minutes with a manufacturer tool, or a tool designed for the purpose of "fixing the odometer reading." Unless Nissan's odos are somehow impervious to this, it could still be either one. Just hoping to figure out if there's a way to tell what's been done past a shadow of a doubt and get my money back.

DennisMik

iTrader: (2)

The dealer has the tool to change the odometer, but they will only use it if they are changing out the cluster. And then they will put the old cluster's mileage reading into the new cluster. The state regulations are so strict on the dealers that if they were caught changing the mileage reading, that would be the end of the dealership. The owners won't risk losing the dealership over something that trivial.

But based on what you said, I would point a finger at the guy who bought the car from the auction house.

Montego Murph

iTrader: (1)

Just a thought... is it possible that at some point the cluster was replaced by a previous owner due to malfunction/cracked plastic window/whatever and didn't bother to report it when selling? I mean, rolling back from 171k to 130k still leaves you with a high-mileage car in the end. Its not like they scrubbed off 100k and armor-alled the helll out of it.

Just a little trivia if I have it right, in Illinois, anything over 100k miles is listed as "Exceeds mechanical limits" on the title because years ago, odometers only had 5 digits.

BigLou55

iTrader: (6)

This is more than likely what occurred. My cluster was bad on my max, I swapped it with a another one and I lost 65100 miles. I have no plans to sell it so it only matters to me.

Frank_Horrigan

Well, like I said, the auction place listed the car at 171,000 miles in June of 2013, and the (extremely sketchy) dealership I bought it from in September of 2013 listed it as 121,000. There weren't any other owners between June and September of 2013. The only people that had the car were at the dealership.

DennisMik

iTrader: (2)

A Nissan dealership sold you the car? I would call Nissan headquarters in California and start complaining.

Frank_Horrigan

I apologize, it wasn't a Nissan dealership, but a used car dealership. Used car lot? Again, a fairly sketchy place in a part of town that I should have known better to buy a car from, and I wouldn't put it past them to tamper with an odometer for some extra cash.