Is this legal?

Actually it's perfectly legal to modify the mileage of your car. However it is illegal to lie about it to a prospective buyer. Saw this explained very clearly on Carte Blanche a few months ago, they did a whole expose on the mileage correct of second-hand cars. Basically there's absolutely nothing the cops can do about it because the equipment to do it is freely available on the internet, there is no law against it and it is very difficult to prove that the owner of the car knew about the mileage correction before selling it.
 
Eish so if buying a car there's no guarantee the mileage will be correct?
 
Of course it can't be illegal to reset an odometer - the indicated mileage in itself has no legal significance. It would be absurd to have a law about odometers.

But using a significantly lower odo reading to misrepresent the wear and tear on the vehicle and thereby obtaining a better price than the seller would otherwise have obtained if the buyer had known the true mechanical condition, can well amount to fraudulent misrepresentation ... provided of course the mileage is significant to the buyer and the seller induced the buyer to enter into the contract based on this misrepresentation, or obtained a significantly higher price because of the misrepresentation.

Ornery law of contract covers this.

Of course one will need to call on experts to establish the facts, and what difference the difference really makes.
 
Last edited:
ugh...its a full time job keeping up with all the schemes the shysters come up with.
 
Sometimes I wonder on whose side the law is really on
 
wabbit16 said:
Sometimes I wonder on whose side the law is really on
Click to expand...
In this case it's on the owner's side. If the odo stops working, or you wish to replace it with your own aftermarket clocks, why should the law prevent you? It's your car, after all. You may mod it as you wish provided you don't compromise safety or identification (in which case stricter criteria apply). But the odo just counts revolutions in the drive train.

Just don't use your reset or rewound odo to defraud someone.]
 
... and ask a lot of sensible questions.

We all know odo reading is at best only a very rough clue about the condition of the drive train (engine, gearbox, etc). It's not only possible but frequently the case that a car with 100 000km of long distance open road kilometers has an engine+gearbox in far better nick than many a car with 25 000km of stop-go city driving over short distances. By far the roughest thing for an engine in normal use is the time from cold start to full running temp, and that can easily take 10-15km, depending on car and conditions. Doing 25 000 km in short-trip stop-go city driving is very, very heavy on mechanical parts. Of course oil and temps are critical too.
 
Last edited:
Fazda said:
:wtf: This country never ceases to amaze me!
Click to expand...

There are some legitimate uses of this... e.g. new engine or ecu/instrument cluster (wherever the milage total is stored). But ja...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X