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Odometer rollbacks are really common these years. NHTSA says that about 450,000 cars are sold yearly
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in the US with the wrong odometer reading. That's huge, it's like half million cars. Buying the
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vehicle that has 50k miles more than its odometer says, it's the monstrous mistake because you will
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not know when to change the timing chain, you will not know when to change oil and everything else,
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so it's really important to check whether the odometer reading is correct. But how can
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you do this? Well, first of all, you may need to look in the service book of this
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car. If the vehicle doesn't have this book, you may call the dealership that sold this
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car and ask whether the car was officially serviced, maybe they have this information,
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or ask the owner or the dealer that you're buying the car from, where the car was serviced,
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maybe this dealership or this independent mechanic will have the records that you need to check the
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mileage. You will check every oil change and you will compare them, the mileage you get from
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that information with the odometer readings. The second thing to check is the interior of the car.
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You will start with the seats. Now, leather seats are really hard to check because they will, if the
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leather is of high quality, they will be okay for more than 150,000 miles. But if your car reads,
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if the odometer in your car reads something like 50k miles and you see that the leather is cracked,
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that it has some damages, so the odometer is most likely adjusted. Also, look at the steering wheel.
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Again, these leather steering wheels can be OK for a lot of time, but you will have the buttons here,
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the buttons of cruise control, the buttons of multimedia, and you can see if the paint on
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these buttons is damaged, this is exactly the sign that the car has a lot of money on it,
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like 150k miles at least. Also, you may check the plastic on the shifter. It should look like new
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up to about 100k miles. After that, it may have some scratches, it may have some damages, and one
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more thing to look at are pedals. So up to about 100k miles, the pedals should look like this. They
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should look like they are new. There shouldn't be any damages, but after 100k miles, you may notice
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some damages. You may notice some worn parts here or here. It depends on where exactly this pedal
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is pressed most of the time. You see that this pedal is pressed here because it's not really
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clean here, and this part of this pedal will start look like it's worn out at about 100k miles. Also,
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you may use tires for finding the problems with the mileage. How to do this? You may need to find
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the age of the tire, and this tire was made in year 2013. If the mileage of the car you buy is
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like 30k miles, it may still be on the original tires, on the tires that it was sold with. So,
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like in this case, this car has about 50k miles, and it has two sets of tires, the summer tires and
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winter tires, and it's made in the year 2014. So, the original tires, the tires were made in 2013,
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34th week, and we can conclude that the mileage of this vehicle is more or less
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original. It's not touched. The fourth thing is a good idea to have a scanner,
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or maybe to have a friend with a scanner, or maybe to go to the independent mechanic
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with a good scanner, because what you see on odometer is easily changed with a code reader,
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with a code reader that costs about 100 bucks. So, anyone can change the odometer these days,
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but they can only change the odometer, and maybe the readings in the ECU, and if the cheap scanner
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was used for changing these odometer readings, you will find the actual mileage of this car
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in various blocks, at least in the transmission control unit, in the body control unit, in some
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anti theft system unit, they will also have the mileage saved, not in all cars, not in all cases,
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but the majority of modern cars will have this option. So, if you have a good code scanner,
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not just code reader, but a good code scanner, it can scan, it can take the actual mileage of
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this car from various models in the vehicle. And if you use this, you will know the original
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mileage. And the last thing you can do is to buy a report. You can buy something like Carfax report,
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or whatever, I don't advertise any. There are tons of companies that make these reports, and you can
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buy the report and see that the car was sold, for example, to someone with certain mileage,
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or the car was sold in auction, or it was repaired in any official dealership, and the mileage was
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registered. So, you will see anything that legally was made with this car, and you will probably
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track the mileage with these accidents, repairs, maintenance issues, and all the things. You will
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track the mileage. And for example, if you see that in the first three years this car went
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50k miles, and now it's 10 year old, it has 60k miles, on its odometer, it's for sure not true.
