Greyboy

How can you tell if the odo has been tampered with? Just curious b/c now I'm suspicious.

DigitalDashMax

Some of the things that you should look for are:

- Scarring of the screws that hold in the dash piece.
- look at the brake and accelerator pedals and see how bad they are worn (A car with 100,00 kms shouldn't have the rubber worn to the metal on the petals)
- look at service records ( if the car has had alot of servicing for a low KM vehicle)
- speak to the owner previous to the one that you bought it off of as to how much km's they had on it when they sold it.
- even the mannerisims of the person who sold the car to you can be a tip off to if to has been tampered with.
- take the car to a mechanic (like myself) and tell them what you suspect and see if they can find any proof.
- look for even the smallest clues such as worn out seats (if the person hardly used the car then they shouldn't have worn out the seats)
Think of any thing in a car that would wear out faster in a heavily used car than in a lightly used car. (and I mean everything even armrests, how many little stone spots on the winsheild). You also may want to look at local Nissan Dealerships to see if the prevoius owner took it there at any time for servicing they would have a record of the milage when it came in.
Also when you are buying the car if you suspect that the od has been tampered with remind the person that it is a federal offence. (at least in Canada it is and I think it is in the States as well.)

Ryan.(P.S.- I used to work for a mechanic shop that also sold and bought cars)

block

its a federal offense in the us too. except for a couple states I think. Also run a carfax on it. I did that on my car because the carfax was free. it said the mileage on there at different dates for example. august 1992 29,000 october 1998 130,000.

Greyboy

Well, I didn't think about the gas/break pedals and the seats. When I bought the car, the major selling point was how good of shape it was inside and out. The seats are flawless and the petals are just fine as well. Then only problems with it is the hole in the carpet on the drivers side, a broken outer lense for the passenger taillight, and a crack in the rear bumber. They said that some grandma lady owned it before me and they had most of the repair records. I looked at all of them and they looked good. I don't know how that hole could have got there, but it pisses me off! It could be a major indicator that the car does have more miles on it than indicated, but if you look at the car, you can tell that it has only 78K miles on it. It's also a New London area car and it barely has ANY rust on the underside for a 7 yr old salt licker. Oh well, I paid $7800 for it and I've probably dropped in $2500 between brakes, stereo, and struts. I think that it's worth it - runs like new still!

Chris Gregg

iTrader: (59)

Something I never realized untill after buying the car with the busted speedo sensor, was that when one of these goes bad on the car, it will just jump. It will not maintain the speed of the car and will only speratically add miles to the odometer. So, my car may have considerably more mileage than 145,000 or maybe not, I can never know. It would depend on how long he drove it broken, and then however long it took me to fix it! My first thought was that it was the guage assembly, so I replaced it first, after looking everything over, that's when I noticed how easy these things are to tamper with. In finding out if it has been tampered with, another way is to look and see if the tabs on the sides of the odometer look like they've been bent. For anyone who's worked on their gauges, you know what I'm talking about.

Jeff92se

iTrader: (82)

Go do a vin check from carfax. It will tell you the history of the car and the mileage at different registration points. If you car suddenly has 50,000 miles less, then something is 100% screwed up. http://members.aol.com/dragonz58/page/freereport2.html

If that doesn't work go to http://www.twinturbo.net and dink around the links section for carfax.

FAST4EN

uhhh...that link doesn't work.

Brandon90gxe

dammit i dont wanna pay 20 bucks for the report, it sais it found 3 records on mine though.

superdesi

If you want, I can run the report for your for a reduced price. Only if you have PayPal!

FAST4EN

How much Reduced?

superdesi

How about half price? $10 Bucks!

NYCe MaXiMa

iTrader: (9)

I remember when my bro was looking for a car, we used this page like a million times,
its a free promo page, have no idea if it still works, but what you do is just fill out that dumb survey.

http://www.carfax.com/cfm/PromoPage1.cfm