How many miles? :(

[DLK]

Well Scott's Speedometer called and said my 56K speedometer has seen 99,999 at least once and maybe twice and is shot. I have bought enough collector cars to take any owner representations with a grain of salt, clearly my 50 Dodge has a lot more than 56K actual miles it was claimed to have. Oh well, I like the car and just have to live with the fact it needs more work than I expected.

[PatS....]

Well, it COULD have had the speedo replaced over the years as well. Maybe more than once.

How does the rest of the car look???

[Young Ed]

That sure doesnt seem like a high mileage car. How do they know its been over that many times?

[Norm's Coupe]

Ed,

When someone turns back an old speedometer in an old car like ours, the numbers do not line up as they should afterward. Any good speedo shop can spot something like that right away.

[Young Ed]

How would the numbers not line up? If they dont line up on the inside the ones you see driving down the road wouldn't line up either. Besides he didn't say it had been turned back but that it had been turned over past 100K

[Norm's Coupe]

Ed,

I really don't know how they can tell that. But this is what I was told years ago, in the 50's or 60's. I can't tell either myself. Guess you have to be a professional speedo man to know.

[Plymouthy Adams]

I thought that they were a speedo repair facility..did they state a reason other than just worn, I would figure they had the capability to rebush enlongated holes, replace/vibrate hair spring and balance shafts, is it just the odometer section...very vague

[Joe Flanagan]

I think I read on this forum some years ago that back in the 40's (and probably earlier) there were odometer "specialists" who could turn back the miles on cars without it being noticed. I read that dealers would hire these guys to come to their lot and change the mileage on high-mileage cars. Is this relevant to the thread or just interesting? I don't know. But now that I've typed it, I think I'll send it.

[Young Ed]

Joe I can verify you are correct.

[RobertKB]

I think I read on this forum some years ago that back in the 40's (and probably earlier) there were odometer "specialists" who could turn back the miles on cars without it being noticed. I read that dealers would hire these guys to come to their lot and change the mileage on high-mileage cars. Is this relevant to the thread or just interesting? I don't know. But now that I've typed it, I think I'll send it.

I have changed the mileage on the speedometers in both my '48 Dodge and '53 Plymouth. I had trouble with both speedometers over the years and put in "new to me" used ones that worked well when bench tested. I had to change the oddometers as I wanted them to show the actual miles that were on the cars. It is easy to take the numbers out and reinsert them to show a different mileage. If I can do it, I am sure the car sharks way back when could do it in a heartbeat.

Edited October 27, 2009 by RobertKB
grammar

[Young Ed]

Right Robert. I bet as long as you have clean hands there'd be no way to know short of fingerprinting the parts. At the age of 21 I reassembled a speedo for my old truck and set it to 000000. The truck came with 3-4 speedometers and who knows which was right. Done carefully I say there is no way for someone to know it was changed.

[Norm's Coupe]

Joe, you are correct. Turning back speedo's of used cars back in the 40's & 50's was a common thing for used car dealers to do, to make the car more valuable. Then sometime in the 60's the government started clamping down on that, but it did continue until at least the early 80's, even though it was then illegal.

As I've mentioned before, I sort of got stuck selling all the company cars that the salesmen didn't sell on their own, until the early 80's. Sometime in the mid 70's I had hooked up with a used car broker trying to unload a bunch of company cars with high mileage. They were all one year or less old, but would have between 20,000 and 40,000 miles on them. He gave me the name of a large new car dealer down south and said that guy would probably buy them. Said that guy didn't worry about mileage because he would move them around so much between states that he was able to lower the mileage by the time it went on the lot. So.......I called that guy. He had dealers in several states at the time. I'd sell that guy 100 or more cars per year after that at top wholesale dollar, regardless of mileage, he didn't care. He'd just send a trailer to the main plant and pick them up, sight unseen. However, I think he must have got caught. The last time I called the dealership looking for him, they said no one knew where he was. Had his home number so called there. His wife said he was gone and didn't know where he was either. He just disappeared into thin air. Never did find him again.

Now, all this about turning back the mileage and moving the cars from state to state was just hearsay on my part. I got that from the car broker here, so don't really know for sure if that's what actually happened. And, to be honest, I didn't care. I just wanted to unload all those cars for my company.

[BobT-47P15]

That does seem rather curious that a speedo shop didn't seem to be able to fix

the thing. Do you have, or can you get, any more speedos for your car - and

could the shop then combine good parts to make you a correctly working item??

I've never sent one off to be repaired. One time I did call a speedo shop somewhere...

the guy said the deal is - you send us the unit, we inspect it to see what it needs,

give you a quote. Then you either tell us to go ahead and fix it at the price stated,

or you pay shipping to have it returned unrepaired.

[TodFitch]

On a slightly related note, my in-laws had a Olds that they purchased new and kept forever. Not even sure what year it was. It was equipped with a odometer that rolled over to zero from 99,999 miles. And I know that it was driven far enough that it rolled over at least once.

When my mother-in-law had an accident (other guy's fault) the insurance company claims adjuster noted the apparent low mileage (maybe 30,000) and that the condition of the car, other than collision damage, was consistent with that low mileage. So the adjuster gave credit for the car being a very low mileage vehicle.

So sometimes just by taking proper care of a car you can keep it looking younger than it is. Even if a "professional" examines it they can be fooled.

[Jim Saraceno]

We had a '95 Windstar with an odometer that got stuck. It was still under warrantee so we brought it back. They replaced the whole unit, told us it was a sealed unit and could not be opened for repair.

Of course the new unit had zero miles on it. When I asked how anyone would ever tell the real mileage, they told me that replacement units have red decimal numbers, originals have black. Anyone working on the car would notice the red number and look for the sticker (can't remember where they put it) that had the mileage when the unit was replaced.

No one ever did noticed it.

[Young Ed]

When my moms 97 olds got flooded it shorted out the ins cluster. The dealer had to send or order the new one out of I believe Kansas. I think they said that was the only place in the country that could reprogram the digital ones.

[Norm's Coupe]

Jim,

Those sealed units just came out sometime in the 80's or 90's. That was another attempt to stop people from turning back the speedo before they sold the car. Don't know about the titles where you live. But.......up here you have to sign an odometer statement stating it is the correct mileage. So.....in a case like yours, you'd have to say it's not the correct mileage, then explain why on that sworn statement. If the speedo was replaced at 30,000 miles for example, that's what you'd have to state on that statement, then add the mileage of the new speedo to the old one for the correct mileage. I think the mileage statement is about the same all over. Think that's actually a federal law.

[JerseyHarold]

Since odometer tampering was legal until the early seventies, my assumption is that any car that got sold before that time was probably clocked. Which is why I'm very skeptical about low mileage claims on an old car unless there is a pile of documentation to support it.

An owner-operator of a Crown Victoria airport cab (he bought it new) once asked me how many miles I thought were on his car. The odometer said about 60K, so I ventured that the car had 160K (he kept it in excellent condition). It turns out that the car had 560 thousand miles on it! Sure proves the value of maintenance.

[DLK]

That sure doesnt seem like a high mileage car. How do they know its been over that many times?

I agree Ed that my car does not look like a car with 156,000 let alone 256,000 miles. I was kind of surprised that the owner at Steve's was so sure it had gone over. I guess as others have pointed out, my car may not have the original speedo anyhow. He sold me a NOS new one for $275 which doesn't seem too bad since that is what rebuild would have likely cost anyhow from the places I asked for a ballpark estimate.

My wife and I have been in Kansas City the past week where it's been a lot warmer than back home in Minnesota.

[Frank Elder]

I agree Ed that my car does not look like a car with 156,000 let alone 256,000 miles. I was kind of surprised that the owner at Steve's was so sure it had gone over. I guess as others have pointed out, my car may not have the original speedo anyhow. He sold me a NOS new one for $275 which doesn't seem too bad since that is what rebuild would have likely cost anyhow from the places I asked for a ballpark estimate.

My wife and I have been in Kansas City the past week where it's been a lot warmer than back home in Minnesota.

Maybe he just wanted to make a sale? I thought he rebuilt them also......Did you get your old one back, you'll never know if he kept it.

[DLK]

Maybe he just wanted to make a sale? I thought he rebuilt them also......Did you get your old one back, you'll never know if he kept it.

Let's face it for a lot of this oddball repair stuff you are at the mercy of the vendor. At least I did enough homework to have read a number of on-line recommendations for this place - he has been in business since 1953. We'll see if he returns the old one I suppose if he does I could send it to another shop just to see if they give it last rites as well.

[Frank Elder]

Research is indeed your best friend:)I would ask for it back since it is yours.

[David Maxwell]

...to turn back the odometer on a 40's car. When I installed the "zero" mile engine in my P15, I felt it was entirely appropriate to reset the odometer to zero. I just removed the counter wheel and rolled it back (or maybe it was forward) to zero. Not hard at all. I did an off-frame resto and put the new engine in so I wanted to track the miles from that point. If I ever sold the car (which I won't) I would certainly tell the buyer that the car read 86,000 when I restored it and probably had been turned over at least once.

I think I read on this forum some years ago that back in the 40's (and probably earlier) there were odometer "specialists" who could turn back the miles on cars without it being noticed. I read that dealers would hire these guys to come to their lot and change the mileage on high-mileage cars. Is this relevant to the thread or just interesting? I don't know. But now that I've typed it, I think I'll send it.