Hey scotty i recently purchased a used infinity g37 convertible with 168k miles. How can i tell if it was mostly highway or city mileage?
If you mentioned the car's year, that would be a huge help. Typically when cars have high mileage and recent model years (greater than approximately 15-20k miles a year), they've likely been driven mainly on the highway, but it's just a rule of thumb. Nobody can tell the difference.
There really isn’t a physical way to tell.
One way to attempt to tell, is to look at other information, like year, mileage, previous ownership, maintenance records. But there is no certain way to tell.
How can i tell if it was mostly highway or city mileage?
You can't.
Do a wet/dry compression check - it will give you an idea of how worn the engine is, whether from city or highway or lack of oil changes. There isn't a comparable test for the transmission, which actually is more severely affected by stop and go driving. But I go by parking nicks - if you drive and park in a city, you will either have them, or have re-painted the car.
How can i tell if it was mostly highway or city mileage?
by having a mechanic inspect it. Did you do that before you plunked money down?
I just thought of something. Depending on how much live data is available to a very high-level scan tool, you might be able to tell whether or not it's been driven on the highway by measuring how accurate the shift points still are. If it's been mainly highway driven, theoretically the shift points from the computer to the transmission actually shifting into them should be very close together. I saw Scotty evaluating an F-150 based on the shift points and the delay, once. I think that was like 6 months ago.
I saw Scotty evaluating an F-150 based on the shift points and the delay
yes you could do it that way if you had a fancy scan tool. Or you could do it the poor man's way (which Scotty also does): take it for a test drive, gun it, and see how it shifts and feels.
When you own a car for a long time, it's difficult to notice the gradual decline in shift performance, but I can tell you that when I had my trans replaced, it was a night and day difference. Like a new car. Strong, confident shifts. A guy like Scotty probably has a really good feel for it after working on cars for 50 years.