RE: Clocking loophole closing
Discussion
kambites said:
It would take about ten minutes to work around - you'd just need to remove the Flash/EEPROM device the ECU was using to store the mileage, write a lower value using a stand-alone programmer, then solder it back on.
Whatever you do, you can probably never stop people from changing the whole module over to one from a lower mileage car.
Blimey, as easy as that? That's a bit of a bugger isn't it?!Whatever you do, you can probably never stop people from changing the whole module over to one from a lower mileage car.
Other than young cars as described I can't see why anyone would pay more or think they could get more money for a clocked car. It's so easy to spot a clocked car it's absurd, if I know an aspect of the cars iffy then everything else isn't to be trusted. MOT history on line is free and simple to use, buying my A6 almost every car I phoned about was met with warning signs such as no history except a stamped service book, no history at all, no previous mot certificates, questions on why I want the vin and registration number & hesitancy in giving it etc and all of these cars on looking at MOT history were clocked.
I'd much rather buy a stellar mileage car with all it's documentation from new than something with lower or average miles and not a receipt to its name.
Best was an S6 it had no receipts or old mot certificates, tax discs or anything else, had a nice service book full of stamps. I'd sent the mrs to look at it and gave her a few questions to ask main one being can I see the previous Mot certificates. This was a dealer in south oxfordshire. He gave her a load of crap about how 'no one keeps Mots or service receipts if it has it's stamps that's all that matters'. She said it was completely obvious to her he was hiding something / talking bull s
t. She took the vin & reg much to his irritation and said she'd be checking it on line, his reply - 'they always make mistakes entering MOT data it means nothing'.
Turned out that it had an exemplary MOT record with never anything wrong at all, had done 16k a year for the first 8 years of its life so quite high mileage but perfect otherwise, that is up until 18 months before when the MOT history had a gap, HPI also had it as un-taxed and then the recent MOT had a drop of 40,000 miles. Presenting this info to the dealer and saying will you drop the price to reflect the real mileage (he was asking top book) he had a tantrum. Looked a nice car, I suspect it had been running round on false plates and hadn't been touched in terms of maintenance for the previous 18months or broken and off the road.
I'd much rather buy a stellar mileage car with all it's documentation from new than something with lower or average miles and not a receipt to its name.
Best was an S6 it had no receipts or old mot certificates, tax discs or anything else, had a nice service book full of stamps. I'd sent the mrs to look at it and gave her a few questions to ask main one being can I see the previous Mot certificates. This was a dealer in south oxfordshire. He gave her a load of crap about how 'no one keeps Mots or service receipts if it has it's stamps that's all that matters'. She said it was completely obvious to her he was hiding something / talking bull s
t. She took the vin & reg much to his irritation and said she'd be checking it on line, his reply - 'they always make mistakes entering MOT data it means nothing'.Turned out that it had an exemplary MOT record with never anything wrong at all, had done 16k a year for the first 8 years of its life so quite high mileage but perfect otherwise, that is up until 18 months before when the MOT history had a gap, HPI also had it as un-taxed and then the recent MOT had a drop of 40,000 miles. Presenting this info to the dealer and saying will you drop the price to reflect the real mileage (he was asking top book) he had a tantrum. Looked a nice car, I suspect it had been running round on false plates and hadn't been touched in terms of maintenance for the previous 18months or broken and off the road.
Herman Toothrot said:
It's so easy to spot a clocked car it's absurd,
That depends rather on how it's been done. You could argue that my Elise is "clocked" because the speedometer sender broke and I drove it for something like a thousand miles without any speed signal to the dashboard, so of course the odometer wasn't counting up. If I wanted to, it would take me half an hour to put a switch in that line so I would switch the odometer on and off and hence only counting half my mileage. gforceg said:
Shirley it must be possible for the ECU to store an uneditable (read only) record of the mileage which isn't affected by digital alteration of the feed to the odometer in the dash? This record could only be viewed by authorised main dealer staff if there was a query over a car's mileage.
Too simple?
Porsche have been doing this for years. Too simple?
80quattro said:
gforceg said:
Shirley it must be possible for the ECU to store an uneditable (read only) record of the mileage which isn't affected by digital alteration of the feed to the odometer in the dash? This record could only be viewed by authorised main dealer staff if there was a query over a car's mileage.
Too simple?
Porsche have been doing this for years. Too simple?
Shame about the guy who got jailed. Bloody good bloke doing a fine public spirited service :-) NOT !
A van dealer behind a prolific 'clocking' operation has been jailed for four years.
Maxwell Stuart Alvey, of Gedling Road, Arnold, admitted ten counts of fraud after wiping millions of miles from more than 100 vans to increase their value.
Jailed: Maxwell Stuart Alvey
Trading standards officers from Notts County Council estimated he profited by more than £100,000 from the scam in just ten months.
The 50-year-old bought the vehicles at auction between August 2009 and June 2010 and altered their mileomoters before selling them on.
Alvey was jailed for two years for the fraud offences and two years for a separate offence of theft, which he will serve consecutively.
He was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court today.
Maxwell Stuart Alvey, of Gedling Road, Arnold, admitted ten counts of fraud after wiping millions of miles from more than 100 vans to increase their value.
Jailed: Maxwell Stuart Alvey
Trading standards officers from Notts County Council estimated he profited by more than £100,000 from the scam in just ten months.
The 50-year-old bought the vehicles at auction between August 2009 and June 2010 and altered their mileomoters before selling them on.
Alvey was jailed for two years for the fraud offences and two years for a separate offence of theft, which he will serve consecutively.
He was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court today.
they should not be able to fiddle with that 
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.
prg123 said:
Surely with encryption methods, it would be possible for the car companies to lock down the system so that only main dealers can change the mileage on a car....
- Pete
If it is possible to clone keys by using equipment available to buy on the open market, then anything “only” main dealers can have access to wouldn’t work.- Pete
I wonder if those that clocked this have had a call from Trading Standards yet:
http://www.pistonheads.com/news/26246.htm
Won't someone think of the parents of the children (those that buy clocked cars)?
http://www.pistonheads.com/news/26246.htm
Won't someone think of the parents of the children (those that buy clocked cars)?
This is great news, Still wont stop them mind....but at least its making their life more difficult in the immediate future.
I went to look at a 106 once and there were marks around the instruments, couldn't be sure it had been clocked but i walked away none the less. With these digital clocks there is no visual trace of anyone hampering with the instruments at all. yet another example of how modern technology is making things worse! although i do wander whether clocking has increased or decreased?
I went to look at a 106 once and there were marks around the instruments, couldn't be sure it had been clocked but i walked away none the less. With these digital clocks there is no visual trace of anyone hampering with the instruments at all. yet another example of how modern technology is making things worse! although i do wander whether clocking has increased or decreased?
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!
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!
i totally agree dave ive had two sets of clocks on my vito van in five years of owning it(these are well renound for breaking)bought the clocks secondhand from a breakers and had the mileage put to the correct mileage with a local firm,how much would this have cost if i had gone to mercedes.
dave_s13 said:
When I bought my Volvo v70 a few years back the clocks failed. The dealer put used ones in from a newer car and the mileage went from 103k to 74k
He had it corrected back up to the higher mileage and I got a receipt to that effect
So, there is a legitimate use for this service, I'm sure it's not always used as such though.
To add.... DIM replacement at the volvo main dealer is an £800+ job.
He had it corrected back up to the higher mileage and I got a receipt to that effect
So, there is a legitimate use for this service, I'm sure it's not always used as such though.
To add.... DIM replacement at the volvo main dealer is an £800+ job.
Edited by dave_s13 on Monday 26th November 08:42
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!
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!
Just to highlight a legitimate use of these services, I've recently converted my Jap import speedo to read in MPH rather than KM/H, and had the odometer figure changed to show the distance in miles instead of kilometers. I appreciate that there are a relatively low number of cars in the UK that would require this, but they are there all the same.....
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