legacycentral bbs

How easy is it to tamper with the mileage on the odometer? I've seen Legacys for sale with mileage under 100,000 but other parts of the car look like the mileage should be closer to 200,000.

they could look like that simply because of the area they are in. Though it may only have 100k, it still has 10-15 years on it.

I don't claim to know that much about turning the odometers back but I do know that if you simply remove the speedometer cable that the car will still run but the miles won't tally up.

The car would run but you would have some drivability issues because of the malfunctioning vehicle speed sensor.

It seems to me that you could just hook a drill up to where the speedometer cable attaches and roll the mileage that way.

the drill method does nto work, i was trying this on a spare cluster i had. I can't remember what exactly i did to get it to roll back...

MK

I didn't mean to roll it backwards; I meant to roll it forwards until it looped over.

ok

MK

Is it worth tampering? These cars aren't worth all that much anyway. Then again, if you're a little dirt bag corner seller then the likelyhood of getting caught is probably small and may be worth the extra few hundred. Mileage isn't that important with these cars.

Steve

I'd think so. My brother wants to roll my spare cluster over since he'll be going from an auto to a manual and he wants to keep track of his milage.

it's easy to roll forwards and backwards. takes some time, but quite easy.

So does this mean the 100,000 digit can't be messed with independently?

At the junk yard one car has blank in this digit and all numbers perfectly alligned.

Another car, one we might throw $250 for the motor, says 084936. The 4 is slightly higher as I believe it should be as it is ready to roll to 5.

Hubby questions the 0 as he swears it was a 3 last summer. Personally, I think the one with blank was the car with the 300k on it. But as we age our memories aren't perfect!

The appears to be 84k rack & pinion boots were perfect condition compared to the 398k subaru we have that it is going on. Is that a sign that the engine could really only have 84k on it?

I am worried hubby is right the engine is 384k as the hood was up, and the blank one hood was down. We have a habit of lowering hoods on cars we might want the engine. Keeps all the weather out. The 084k car came from police impound and they thought it was 484k - junk yard, said, yeah, right, maybe 184, or 284.

I guess we have to decide if $250 is worth throwing away if the block is no good.

A carfax or similar type report would probably tell what the mileage was.

for the cluster, all you have to do is take the clear cover off and turn the odo manually with a knife or a flat head screwdriver...

Thank you, so I know to check the cover and dash. Another thing that makes me think it could be low mileage is the seat belt lap belt is fine. I should pick that one up while there. But storm coming in so who knows if we ever get it.

Another easy way to alter the milage is to just swap the lower mile speedo cluster from another car... My white wagon currently has 215K on it, but i have a cluster with only 147K... I'd never swap one for resale though. I keep the incase one of the clusters craps out...

My wife's Wagon show 084K miles, but has a sticker on the door post saying the speedo was replaced at 117K miles, so she is slightly over 200K also now...

Just dont do it.