RE: Clocking loophole closing
Discussion
e30s50b30 said:
Al 450 said:
It's not actually possible to clock several modern car types as the information is held in several ecu's in the vehicle and if a mismatch is detected in one then the mileage is automatically reset or a warning light is set. On these vehicles a full mileage reset can only be acheived by replacing 3 or more major modules and then reflashing them all at the same time with dealer spec equipment. Not impossible for a fraudster granted but very difficult and very expensive. Manufacturers should be compelled by Euro legislation to tighten up security on this kind of thing.
Clockers can also program the LKM,EWS and KEYThe BMW forums told me what connector and software I needed to buy from Ebay for about £30 to code the lot to my car. However part of the software means I can recode the air bag system so it doesn't check parts of the system to the light can turn off when you start the car and set the mileage to whatever I wanted. before anyone asks the car is on 206,000 miles and will stay at astro miles.
Toffer said:
Did the photo in the article imply that they had given the MB S Class a shave? 
I bet the S-Class is probably one of the worse for getting clocked. Especially the 320 CDI, in Black or Silver, on London plates. Prime minicab material. Sold on a 3-year/ 30k lease but you can guarantee it won't do that mileagetomoleeds said:
i got a focus 1999 in px around 2005 with 76k on the clock ,no history when i delt a little more it had done 176k, i now of a company boss who dropped off his 7 month audi with 24k on clock at a garage,next time i saw the car it had 7k on clock,last week saw a nissan navara 2007 with 258,000 on clock immaculate,wonder what will happen to that.
How do they get round the servicing though? All modern Audis will report in the DIS and MMI when the next inspection service and next oil service is due in miles and time, and none of them will do 27k without some kind of servicing. If its been reset it would be quite obvious. Call me naive but I don't really see how you can hide thatThinking about the guy from Nottingham named earlier, I was at Nottingham BCA when a Merc C Class came through.
The auctioneer announces that it is showing 140k; he then says, with a cynical resigned smile that when it passed through the very same auction 2-3 months previously it was showing in excess of 185k.
Makes you wonder.
The auctioneer announces that it is showing 140k; he then says, with a cynical resigned smile that when it passed through the very same auction 2-3 months previously it was showing in excess of 185k.
Makes you wonder.
rtz62 said:
Thinking about the guy from Nottingham named earlier, I was at Nottingham BCA when a Merc C Class came through.
The auctioneer announces that it is showing 140k; he then says, with a cynical resigned smile that when it passed through the very same auction 2-3 months previously it was showing in excess of 185k.
Makes you wonder.
Auctions are normally safe, if its sold as mileage not warranted just assume its clocked and price accordingly. If its sold as warranted and later on down the line you discover its clocked, you'd have some comeback. The auctioneer announces that it is showing 140k; he then says, with a cynical resigned smile that when it passed through the very same auction 2-3 months previously it was showing in excess of 185k.
Makes you wonder.
I've often thought my company cars would be perfect clocking material for an unscrupulous dealer.
Take my last car, a very well specced 120d which had clocked up 120,000 miles in three years, most of which with just me in it plying the UKs motorways. I took good care of it, so it was in excellent condition inside and out. The only giveaway was a front covered in stone chips consummate with its mileage. A quick touch up of the paint and roll back 60,000 miles and I would defy anyone to spot it based on a visual inspection.
BUT, as others have said, the lease company had a record of its mileage, requested from me every few months, BMW had a record of its mileage on their key reading system every time it was serviced, kwik fit recorded its mileage every time it had new tyres. I wonder how easy it would be for a buyer to get hold of this info to verify its real mileage?
Take my last car, a very well specced 120d which had clocked up 120,000 miles in three years, most of which with just me in it plying the UKs motorways. I took good care of it, so it was in excellent condition inside and out. The only giveaway was a front covered in stone chips consummate with its mileage. A quick touch up of the paint and roll back 60,000 miles and I would defy anyone to spot it based on a visual inspection.
BUT, as others have said, the lease company had a record of its mileage, requested from me every few months, BMW had a record of its mileage on their key reading system every time it was serviced, kwik fit recorded its mileage every time it had new tyres. I wonder how easy it would be for a buyer to get hold of this info to verify its real mileage?
I wrote to James Ruppert from Autocar about this and he published a column about it.
A work colleague had an Aston Martin DB9 - drove it 30,000 miles a year, had the 'mileage corrected' before it went in for any work, MOT, service, whatever. He cheerfully admitted it while we were chatting one weekend. I was appalled - it's tantamount to fraud, theft, and generally low morality.
He sold the car with 35,000 on the clock, and I know it had done six figures. What a
.
A work colleague had an Aston Martin DB9 - drove it 30,000 miles a year, had the 'mileage corrected' before it went in for any work, MOT, service, whatever. He cheerfully admitted it while we were chatting one weekend. I was appalled - it's tantamount to fraud, theft, and generally low morality.
He sold the car with 35,000 on the clock, and I know it had done six figures. What a
.va1o said:
How do they get round the servicing though? All modern Audis will report in the DIS and MMI when the next inspection service and next oil service is due in miles and time, and none of them will do 27k without some kind of servicing. If its been reset it would be quite obvious. Call me naive but I don't really see how you can hide that
They dont get a service,they get the mileage reset ,in all the mileage holders, air bag,speedo,ecu,etc then get a service with the new mileage,so has full history,or get the oil changed at a local garage in between that does not record mileages. dont forget some of these cars do 30k in 3 months. i always buy a high mileage company car with full service history,so at least you iknow its had the important oil change,and company cars usually get serviced regulary. tomoleeds said:
dont forget some of these cars do 30k in 3 months
Few cars do that sort of mileage - esp the sort of cars where mileage really hurts...Mate's taxi does 35-45,000 miles a year
My old work delivery van did 150 miles a day - 6 days a week.
Local firm who do emergency medical deliveries put 25K a year on their cars.
My first company car - replete with 'free' petrol - did 36,000 miles in it's first year in my keeping.
30K in 3 months would leave hard-to-remove signs on a car - the seats and wheel being f
ked in 12 months for starters. An Aston with 100K on it would NOT pass for one with 30K on it without some expensive doctoring of the interior...
So the real issue isn't the silly stuff - anyone can spot that. It's finding our your nice pre-owned S-Line Audi has had half the servicing it needed and is WAY WAY past a belt replacement... ... ...
gjackson said:
Manufacturers can make it as hard as they like, it will only increase the cost to a legtimate user.
European law means the manufactuers have to allow third parties access. If a main dealer can only do it then that is seen as anti competitive and negatively impacts the consumer.
This.European law means the manufactuers have to allow third parties access. If a main dealer can only do it then that is seen as anti competitive and negatively impacts the consumer.
Once again, the problem lies with the bloody EU.
Without this requirement to have everything open to back street garages it would be very easy to lock down the system and make auto-correction of replacement components a reality.
If you just plugged in a replacement dash, the rest of the cars systems recognised a replacement, wiped it and programmed it with the correct, current data, there wouldn't be any need for clocking services.
FWIW dual independant distance pickups, say gear + RPM going to main ECU, secondary system is ABS sensors going to ABS ECU.
If the two readings are out by a few % car goes into limp home mode and refuses to do anything until main dealer inspects and fixes it.
Encrypted comms between all ECUs. (public/private encryption is a doddle, the private key can be burned in a ROM area of the ECU main CPU that cannot be read externally at all)
Mileage stored in say, 9 ECUs, and they all verify it constantly.
Each part can be hacked (by removing the CPU, putting it into a dev kit and re-writing the code to scan all the ROM and then try to figure out where the private key is), but every single part would need to be hacked to successfully clock the car.
For each and every car.
The point is there is that much computing power, distributed around modern cars, this is a doddle to do in software and needs no extra hardware. So the additional costs would be negligible, but they'd probably use the "feature" as an excuse to bump the price up anyway.
Of course it does require a change in stupid laws, and then updated software which would only come out in new cars, so all current cars would still be vulnerable, but from new cars onwards it'd kill it stone dead.
fwaggie said:
Once again, the problem lies with the bloody EU.
No it doesn't.Put down the Daily Mail and breathe...
fwaggie said:
Without this requirement to have everything open to back street garages it would be very easy to lock down the system and make auto-correction of replacement components a reality.
Absolute and total cobblers.The EU law sensibly requires basic data to be available to any garage - fault codes and other diagnostics you need to fix a car. Without that, most cars would not be fixable by anyone but a main dealer - which would be a disaster for everyone.
Manufacturers are still entitled to put loads of 'encrypted' and 'secure' stuff into cars - and they do just that. The law doesn't require this stuff to be 'open' and it's not - but people find their way into it, figure it out and hack it.
The commonest source of the 'how' is pirated/stolen dealer diagnostic software - once you have that, you have everything you need to know.
fwaggie said:
If you just plugged in a replacement dash, the rest of the cars systems recognised a replacement, wiped it and programmed it with the correct, current data, there wouldn't be any need for clocking services.
True but that 'openness' would make it super-easy to fiddle with that process tooYou really are coming at this from every possible wrong angle
fwaggie said:
If the two readings are out by a few % car goes into limp home mode and refuses to do anything until main dealer inspects and fixes it.
Cue a disaster as dealer forecourts are rammed with cars which have 'false positives' and the dealers/manufacturer are sued out of business.fwaggie said:
Encrypted comms between all ECUs. (public/private encryption is a doddle, the private key can be burned in a ROM area of the ECU main CPU that cannot be read externally at all)
Yeah, no-one ever broke private key systems at all - not, say, the XBOX one or the PS3 one which are WAY stronger than anything a motor manufacturer would dream of usingHarder you try to protect something - harder people try to break it.
fwaggie said:
Mileage stored in say, 9 ECUs, and they all verify it constantly.
You're actually insane...Why not pay a team of unemployed people to inspect your clocks every few days - that would solve it
oilit said:
Good news!
There is no legitimate need for these services...any use of them is purely illegal IMHO. The excuse of a change of clocks due to old ones being faulty/broken and wanting to show correct mileage is BS - I would rather buy from somebody who told me the truth and the retained the old non working clock, receipt for new one, and the service history and MOTs to show the traceability!
See, that I disagree with, not that long ago I looked a bike or sale, advertised as 30k miles or so, the service history and MOT's back up the 30k miles but a known problem with them is the digital dashes die on them, this ones dash had died and had been replaced with one reading less and in KM, so 30k miles was showing as 15km, seller explained this, and was all legit as he was honest about correct mileage.There is no legitimate need for these services...any use of them is purely illegal IMHO. The excuse of a change of clocks due to old ones being faulty/broken and wanting to show correct mileage is BS - I would rather buy from somebody who told me the truth and the retained the old non working clock, receipt for new one, and the service history and MOTs to show the traceability!
Now I am fairly fussy, and I would have wanted to change the clock to read the correct mileage, holding on to the clocks is a great idea in theory, but next person you sell it to may not be so honest, I would much rather it reads the correct mileage, that said, I would only have it legal if done at dealership for your car and you have service history to back up the mileage, otherwise make it illegal as every now and then there is a legitimate use for it, but I don't think anyone should be allowed to do it, and valid proof of mileage should be provided to dealers.
There's bound to be lots of funky stories & theories but the vast majority of it happens, very frequently (& as explained on the bloody first page!) to company cars under 3 years old.
FFS! How hard is it to understand!
It's a perfect business model for fleet companies, they service the cars themselves, as allowed by EU law. As long as they use manufacturer endorsed parts & schedules they're doing nothing wrong.
When the car is approaching the end of its manufacturer warrenty period (conveniently 3 years, or just before it's first mot) the car is sold as it will now be approaching the time when it's not guarenteed any more.
It will be sent to auction with a sheet of paper detailing its service record with the company. One sheet of paper.
After being sold at auction it is clocked, say from 80k miles down to 18k miles. The sheet of paper showing the history is binned.
The unused & brand new service book (if not there another is bought) is then stamped once, perhaps twice with the fake mileage written in, thus legitimising the new mileage of the car along with a fresh mot. If being particulary prudent the clocker will give the car an actual service with a main dealer & not just a fake stamp, this gives him some come-back.
Your average person in the street has absolutely no idea of what to check to verify the mileage, but if they're even occasional viewers of watchdog they may perform a hpi report or my reg check.
It will show up clear.
The new owners drive off happy with a car that has no traceable history & a bought in 3rd party warranty.
They could of course try & find out who the previous owner was & check with them but who would go that far? Hardly any. Also, to completely erase the history, the clocker can register the vehicle in their name so when the new V5 arrives the first owner is no longer there, same with purchasing a new service book-the first owner is no longer registered in the front of that (if they ever were, this gets forgotten about in most lease firm deals).
All of the above is highly unlikely though, as most buyers simply will not chase any of that up. Any that do (a minuscule percentage) can always be refunded, might happen once every five years.
& the cycle continues.....
FFS! How hard is it to understand!
It's a perfect business model for fleet companies, they service the cars themselves, as allowed by EU law. As long as they use manufacturer endorsed parts & schedules they're doing nothing wrong.
When the car is approaching the end of its manufacturer warrenty period (conveniently 3 years, or just before it's first mot) the car is sold as it will now be approaching the time when it's not guarenteed any more.
It will be sent to auction with a sheet of paper detailing its service record with the company. One sheet of paper.
After being sold at auction it is clocked, say from 80k miles down to 18k miles. The sheet of paper showing the history is binned.
The unused & brand new service book (if not there another is bought) is then stamped once, perhaps twice with the fake mileage written in, thus legitimising the new mileage of the car along with a fresh mot. If being particulary prudent the clocker will give the car an actual service with a main dealer & not just a fake stamp, this gives him some come-back.
Your average person in the street has absolutely no idea of what to check to verify the mileage, but if they're even occasional viewers of watchdog they may perform a hpi report or my reg check.
It will show up clear.
The new owners drive off happy with a car that has no traceable history & a bought in 3rd party warranty.
They could of course try & find out who the previous owner was & check with them but who would go that far? Hardly any. Also, to completely erase the history, the clocker can register the vehicle in their name so when the new V5 arrives the first owner is no longer there, same with purchasing a new service book-the first owner is no longer registered in the front of that (if they ever were, this gets forgotten about in most lease firm deals).
All of the above is highly unlikely though, as most buyers simply will not chase any of that up. Any that do (a minuscule percentage) can always be refunded, might happen once every five years.
& the cycle continues.....
jamoor said:
It's a bit like someone selling knives, then being blamed if someone takes it and stabs someone!
No its not, the "mileage correction" people know full well what they are doing. rtz62 said:
Not sure if it was BCA themselves, but I seem to recall that due to the economic climate a lot of fleets are now keeping their vehicles for 4 years which wouldn't benefit the companies that 'adjust' the mileage before sale / mot.
Seems to have returned back to the traditional 2/3 years now, was back in 08/09 IIRC that quite a few got extended to 4 years. va1o said:
jamoor said:
It's a bit like someone selling knives, then being blamed if someone takes it and stabs someone!
No its not, the "mileage correction" people know full well what they are doing.Sorry but I just see this as another way to introduce an additional black box monitor in your cars which would indicate how its driven, mileage etc ..... but be it through the back door. The insurance companies will be reveling in this!
WAKE UP PEOPLE
Do some home work when you go and buy a car.
Has the car got new floor mats? Yes, then why? Oh the old ones wore out = high mileage
Have all the dimples where you hold the steering wheel worn off? = high mileage
Check the Mot certs
HPI check
Check car history previous owners, service records,
if things don't add up walk away....that's it, find a car where all info is correct.
Trouble is normally when you go and look at a car 9 times out of 10 your eyes glaze over and you forget to do the research.
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