RE: Clocking loophole closing

[Devil2575]

Pistonwot said:

dave_s13 said:

k-ink said:

To all those (in a minority) who actually require their vehicle to be clocked with good reason - tough. Why should 99% of the population be put at huge risk because you bought a car with known dodgy instrumentation issues? Yes the main dealer prices are not cheap. But none of this is news either. Far more important is protecting the population from mass criminal behaviour.

You're attitude might change if you were to ever need an instrument cluster replacing and the only option was a 1k+ bill from a main dealer.

If you feel at "huge risk" then you gave the choice to buy either a new car or a main dealer approved used vehicle. The entire population shouldn't be penalised just to cover your ineptitude.

As I said before, there is no need to correct milage if your instrument cluster is replaced. Simply keep all the appropriate documentation.

[edsashed]

the current mot test does not require the mileage to be shown nor for the speedo to work these are not testable items

[redstu]

gck303 said:

LaurasOtherHalf said:

Domf said:

Many initial used cars are now ex fleet or off lease, these cars all turn up at Auction at 2 years 11 months having not yet had an MOT. Most of these cars have well in excess of 30,000 miles (average 3 years) some with motorway mileage that questions if the driver ever stopped the engine. They are bought by dealers and will be sold as 3 year old with 12 month MOT. Now you don't have to be Einstein to know at what point in the car's life is clocking going to take place. These cars will have been well serviced, probably new set of tyres, may be new pedal covers, dents removed, alloys refurbished and machine polished, to the innocent buyer they will look 30k mileage, only steering wheel, gearknob, and drivers seat bolster may be clues. Ask dealer for V5 and try to contack original owner to see what mileage it had with them when it left them.

definately this^^^

oh & all those ferrari's that do 1000 miles between services too

Or, reducing the annual mileage down from 30,000 to 9,000. Change the odometer once a year, just before the MOT and main dealer service. Mid year, go for an oil change at an independent garage and loose the receipt.

Simple answer: get over the mileage on a car! Everyone should know it is short journeys when the car is cold that does damage, not the long ones that rack up the miles.

The sooner people stop caring about a car's mileage, the sooner this problem will go.

Did you see the thread about the clocked Mustang, it had lost about 200000 miles! Are you saying that that wouldnt bother you?

[Raph C]

legalknievel said:

These are the dealers he had been doing it for according to the local press:

http://www.globalcarandcommercial.co.uk/193452/ind...
http://www.austentrading.co.uk
http://www.m4vancentre.co.uk

There's a lovely yellow Ferrari 355 up on M4 Van Centre with only 23k on it.

Looks like a keeper to me!

Bought a Mercedes van from M4vancenter.co.uk for my business a year ago. They could not find the service book but promissed me they would send it to me a week later. I therefore paid £500 less than the invoice and agreed to pay the balance upon receipt of the missing document. I have never seen the service book and never been chased up by the salesman.

Enough said.

[VladD]

When I was a student I had a mate who clocked his cars before he sold them. He bought a low mileage Cortina Mk3, drove it for a couple of years and then went to clock it before he sold it on. He took the clock out to wind it back and saw that there was a sticker on the back of it that read "Oh no, not again". Even he had to see the funny side.

[chryslerben]

Fastpedeller said:

Unfortunately not everyone is as honest as you........ 2 or more dealers working in collusion can easily produce stamped service books etc.

Hahahahahaha mate your hilarious,

I've worked in the majority of types of garage from specialist independents to dealerships over the years and trust be buddy what your saying isn't just laughable its plain ridiculous.

[treetops]

98elise said:

Nigel Worc's said:

Isn't this stuff being tackled from the mot end too ?

I've seen new style mot certs with the mileage details of the last 5 mots on.

So as well as being clocked, you'd need a forged mot cert too ?

Nope...if you are a high mileage driver you buy a new car, do 100k miles in the first 2 years, and before the first MOT you get it corrected to 10k. Some people get it corrected yearly. It adds 1000's to the value of a car.

There is such a small market for legitmate correction, that it should be something main dealers would do for a reasonable fee. It would kill the correction industry over night.

FRAUD.

If anyone knows this is going on, and there seem to be a few of PH, get it reported.

[gck303]

redstu said:

gck303 said:

LaurasOtherHalf said:

Domf said:

Many initial used cars are now ex fleet or off lease, these cars all turn up at Auction at 2 years 11 months having not yet had an MOT. Most of these cars have well in excess of 30,000 miles (average 3 years) some with motorway mileage that questions if the driver ever stopped the engine. They are bought by dealers and will be sold as 3 year old with 12 month MOT. Now you don't have to be Einstein to know at what point in the car's life is clocking going to take place. These cars will have been well serviced, probably new set of tyres, may be new pedal covers, dents removed, alloys refurbished and machine polished, to the innocent buyer they will look 30k mileage, only steering wheel, gearknob, and drivers seat bolster may be clues. Ask dealer for V5 and try to contack original owner to see what mileage it had with them when it left them.

definately this^^^

oh & all those ferrari's that do 1000 miles between services too

Or, reducing the annual mileage down from 30,000 to 9,000. Change the odometer once a year, just before the MOT and main dealer service. Mid year, go for an oil change at an independent garage and loose the receipt.

Simple answer: get over the mileage on a car! Everyone should know it is short journeys when the car is cold that does damage, not the long ones that rack up the miles.

The sooner people stop caring about a car's mileage, the sooner this problem will go.

Did you see the thread about the clocked Mustang, it had lost about 200000 miles! Are you saying that that wouldnt bother you?

Buying a Mustang that had done 200,000 miles? Nope, as it would be rather inexpensive.

[annodomini2]

Many cars with these systems log the mileage in several places, e.g. ABS, Air bag, Body computers.

But this is not infallible.

The next level is to use the comms systems present in most current cars to log the mileage to an external database.

Again this is not infallible.

Encryption is not infallible. If there's a way in, you can get in.

Electronic 'security' mechanisms are there as a deterrent, nothing more.

The issue with the electronic systems is that; once someone determined discovers a method for bypassing the system, it is easily replicated.

With the mechanical systems you needed someone near by who was determined.

[CO2000]

Nice surname for for 'mileage correction' boss

[Pistonwot]

redstu said:

gck303 said:

LaurasOtherHalf said:

Domf said:

Many initial used cars are now ex fleet or off lease, these cars all turn up at Auction at 2 years 11 months having not yet had an MOT. Most of these cars have well in excess of 30,000 miles (average 3 years) some with motorway mileage that questions if the driver ever stopped the engine. They are bought by dealers and will be sold as 3 year old with 12 month MOT. Now you don't have to be Einstein to know at what point in the car's life is clocking going to take place. These cars will have been well serviced, probably new set of tyres, may be new pedal covers, dents removed, alloys refurbished and machine polished, to the innocent buyer they will look 30k mileage, only steering wheel, gearknob, and drivers seat bolster may be clues. Ask dealer for V5 and try to contack original owner to see what mileage it had with them when it left them.

definately this^^^

oh & all those ferrari's that do 1000 miles between services too

Or, reducing the annual mileage down from 30,000 to 9,000. Change the odometer once a year, just before the MOT and main dealer service. Mid year, go for an oil change at an independent garage and loose the receipt.

Simple answer: get over the mileage on a car! Everyone should know it is short journeys when the car is cold that does damage, not the long ones that rack up the miles.

The sooner people stop caring about a car's mileage, the sooner this problem will go.

Did you see the thread about the clocked Mustang, it had lost about 200000 miles! Are you saying that that wouldnt bother you?

IF you cant see the car has a quarter million miles on it why are YOU buying it?
Idiots cannot be protected from themselves.
Its more of a travesty having kneejerk legislations like this imposed.
These are hedged towards imbeciles with a severely negative impact on everyone else.

[Pistonwot]

chryslerben said:

Fastpedeller said:

Unfortunately not everyone is as honest as you........ 2 or more dealers working in collusion can easily produce stamped service books etc.

Hahahahahaha mate your hilarious,

I've worked in the majority of types of garage from specialist independents to dealerships over the years and trust be buddy what your saying isn't just laughable its plain ridiculous.

Good luck explaining that to the tinfoil hat brigade.

"Its a conspiracy I tells ya"

[julian64]

I think if you make it illegal you'll make it even more lucrative.

Look at it this way, at teh moment people don't pay too much attention to the mileage and instead use their eyeballs and buy on the state of the car.

Fast forward to a time when its illegal and people therefore trust the cars mileage more. People ill buy on the mileage of the car as reported and mileage correction will be much more lucrative.

Making it illegal will just change the sort of people doing it, not stop it being done. Similar to drugs really

[Fastpedeller]

chryslerben said:

Hahahahahaha mate your hilarious,

I've worked in the majority of types of garage from specialist independents to dealerships over the years and trust be buddy what your saying isn't just laughable its plain ridiculous.

Are you saying it doesn't happen? I've witnessed postal MOT's where the station hasn't seen the car!
If there's money to be made, It will happen.

[ZesPak]

chryslerben said:

Hahahahahaha mate your hilarious,

I've worked in the majority of types of garage from specialist independents to dealerships over the years and trust be buddy what your saying isn't just laughable its plain ridiculous.

Wasn't there a documentary somewhere where certain motorcycle dealers were exposed as buying stolen bikes (even ordering "gangs" to have bikes stolen for them, however that was never proved!), and then stripping them for replacement parts, selling them as new parts?
Another welcome byproduct was that the stolen bikes needed to be replaced, so extra sales as well.

And then we're hilarious by insinuating that certain dealers might be fraudulent?

I think you're the one that's being ridiculous. It's all nice you believe in the good of people, but pretending that it won't happen and laughing at people insinuating really makes me wonder how anybody could be so naive?

Fastpedeller said:

Are you saying it doesn't happen? I've witnessed postal MOT's where the station hasn't seen the car!
If there's money to be made, It will happen.

This, very much so.

Edited by ZesPak on Monday 26th November 14:33

[Proe]

theres a sign offering digital mileage clocking at the junction onto the m8 in glasgow from Cathedral st. Thought it was pretty ballsy putting it out there like that.

[sam303]

theJT said:

Looking at this from the perspective of an IT type, it shouldn't be _that_ hard to make something more or less hack proof. Do the whole lot in hardware and keep the odo reading on some memory that's actually baked into the ECU. Design the inputs to that memory such that it can only ever increment it's counter, never decrement it - not particularly hard. Of course, this does require the fabbing of a custom part, which is going to be expensive - although if the raspberry PI people can get a whole machine fabbed and sell it for £35 then you'd expect a car company to have no problem doing it. Use the same part across the whole range and the volume would swallow up the cost.

There's no problem with getting a new one if you actually _need_ a new one, because you can get one set to 0, and then push it up to the correct mileage, but you can never turn an existing one back because it's physically not possible to decrement the counter.

It doesn't stop anyone from simply replacing the entire ECU with a new one of course, but have it numbers matched to the chassis/engine so if there's a mismatch then you'd be expected to pony up some paperwork explaining why it was changed and who changed it. If the part was only available directly from the manufacturer, then they could always insist on getting the old one back before they send you a new one, and you'll get the new one sent out with the old mileage already on it.

Should the old one not be readable for some reason, then you get the new one with a warning hard-coded into it that anyone with a diagnostic computer can read saying "We can't verify that this mileage is correct, buyer beware!"

I like this post ^

[Fastpedeller]

sam303 said:

I like this post ^

I can see the reasoning behind this - however, the more equipment that is required to verify the situation, the less likely it is to happen. The uninformed punter wouldn't know, and unfortunately a lot are just happy to look at the odo and be grateful to see their "desired mileage" and not even question it. Before the customer becomes more savvy and while (as someone else has already stated) the UK public are mileage obsessed, this situation will remain very difficult to alter (unlike the figures on the dash )

[ZesPak]

Fastpedeller said:

I can see the reasoning behind this - however, the more equipment that is required to verify the situation, the less likely it is to happen. The uninformed punter wouldn't know, and unfortunately a lot are just happy to look at the odo and be grateful to see their "desired mileage" and not even question it. Before the customer becomes more savvy and while (as someone else has already stated) the UK public are mileage obsessed, this situation will remain very difficult to alter (unlike the figures on the dash )

I think this "mileage obsessed" is overrated.

Yes, we have selection on car age/mileage, but mainly because they are quantifiable numbers. You can't put a number on "condition". A car with 50000 miles on average looks better and has had half as much use as one with 100k. That doesn't mean that a very good 100k example wouldn't get a glance.

It's like woman, you might want to look for one 18-25, but that doesn't mean that if a nice 35 yo example comes around you wouldn't test drive it.

[only1ian]

Devil2575 said:

only1ian said:

So I'm going to go against the grain and say that these services do need to exist and here is why. My 2002 b10 Alpina instrument cluster recently decided that its didn't want to process the outside temperature correctly. The sensor is fine as it works with a standard e39 dash.

This simple problem causes the a/c to function incorrectly, the heated wing mirrors to be constantly on and I suspect the engine to run at the incorrect mixture.

The only solution is to buy an entirely new cluster, BMW want £3000 for the pleasure and to officially set the mileage using the data in the key. Instead found a German guy who will sell me a refurbed genuine cluster for £360 with my correct mileage programmed in.

Buyers who fail to check the dash reading against service receipts and stamps or buy cars without history take the risk of clocking. The value of a service record seems to have been forgetten and main dealers will fleece those effected by similar problems to myself. So genuine sellers of refurbed clusters deserve to exist.

It should be buyer beware rather than nanny state regulation of a useful service that one day you might be glad of!

My car has had a brand new replacement instrument cluster as the original one failed. This obviously reset the odometer to 0 so now my 90k car says it has done about 27k. So what.

I have all the documentation stating the exact milage it was fitted and it all tallies with the MOT and service documentation.

There is no need to get the milage adjusted other than to satisfy a few peoples automotive OCD.

Probably half the potential buyers would just walk away or not even bother viewing the car. Why should I effect my residual values! The paperwork is key, it's much harder to fake 10 years of main dealer device history and credit card receipts.

Yes they could just use the same to support your situation but half the battle in selling a car is getting people to physically come see it. The current situation is fine and I've been the victim of a clocker. The police should just do more to support buyers who discover they've been done