13 replies to this topic

[vwgtiking]

Have been checking on a car I am looking to buy on this link;

https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk

Over the past 5 years according to the gov website it recorded the below:

2011 - Odometer reading114,967 miles
2012 - Odometer reading122,839 miles
2013 - Odometer reading134,959 miles
2014 - Odometer reading146,508 miles
2015 - Odometer reading103,685 miles

However on the last mot certificate

2011 - 614967
2012 - 722839
2013 - 834959
2014 - 946508

What's going on here? Nearly a million miles? And would vcds give me true mileage.

[doddy666]

Mot's can be faked, there only a print out.

Are you 100% sure the reg was entered correctly?

The fact that it drops 43k from 2014-2015 shows something has happened, either clocked or cluster swap and milage not corrected.

[vwgtiking]

Why fake mileages at nearly a million miles? Can vcds confirm correct mileage stored on ecu?

Yes I double checked reg a few times.

[Franko180]

If it's a MK4 you can't verify the mileage from the car itself as it only stores mileage on the cluster, not the ECU. My previous 1.8T was sold with over 200k miles on it with full history and I've checked on that website and weeks after it was sold it went through MOT with about 100k less miles on it. Can only assume that someone had "clocked" it back and binned about 3-4 years of history (or all the history) and sold it as a 100k car. Bad boys.

[adam-]

VCDS doesn't store it on the ECU. Stored in the cluster though, but that's obviously the same as what's displayed on the odometer.

[vwgtiking]

Vcds can read the mileage off the ecu? Not its no a mk4.

[gerrywac]

think you can safely forget the million odd mile MOT details although it would be interesting to see a new printout from a MOT centre. As mentioned it would be easy enough to doctored one.

 

I'd be more concerned as Doddy666 mentioned with the large drop in mileage in the last year which is fishy. There are legitimate reasons such as a cluster swap but most legitimate garages would install a new one and have it corrected to the same mileage as the old one or at least record the swap and give the mileages for each at the swap.

 

Doing neither is whiffy

 

Sadly you cannot rely on VCDS either. I don't know about the Mk4 cars but on th Mk5 a mileage is recorded in the ECU ad displayed/printed when a scan of the engine module is done and this should correlate closely with the cluster odometer reading. My own car was a one owner car with main dealer FSH when I bought it and the discrepancy over near 80k miles is just 4 miles

 

We do know however that these can be altered quite easily

 

My advice to anyone is that if you have the least doubts is to either walk away or ask demanding questions ad closely scrutinise the answers. At the end of the day we are still talking a common car here

[Franko180]

Vcds can read the mileage off the ecu? Not its no a mk4.

 

Depends on the model you are looking at. Look up EDC15 for an example of mileage stored on an ECU.

[vwgtiking]

Audi A3 8P.

[vwgtiking]

Can this be done? Also worth a view or stay clear? He claims service history all adds up.

[NooNoo]

114967 = 614967 for 2011.

Remove the 6 and 1 leaving 4967.

Add 5 to the 6 = 11.

Place 11 in front of 4967.

= 114967

This translation matches all those numbers..

[NooNoo]

I wouldn't go near it with that 2015 number...

[vwgtiking]

I left it alone in the end. Not keen on the a3 b

[vwgtiking]

114967 = 614967 for 2011.

Remove the 6 and 1 leaving 4967.

Add 5 to the 6 = 11.

Place 11 in front of 4967.

= 114967

This translation matches all those numbers..

If you look they have changed the 1 to 6, 7, 8, then 9 over the previous 4?years of mot