I was looking at a Used 2004 Ford 150 for sale at Ford dealership it is advertised by the dealer as having 159,000 miles and that is what the odometer reads. I won't be purchasing as I will explain why but is there away to tell if the interment cluster has been swapped with a different truck with lower miles? Here is why I believe this has possibly occurred with vehicle. First dealer had free AutoCheck report I checked out which showed the vehicle had been sold at auction 0n 4/10/2017 with a report mileage of 170,721...The dealership claimed it must just be clerical error 4 years ago. I got the CarFax report which had much more detail. The owner who had owned the vehicle prior to the sale at auction owned the vehicle from 2013 to 2017. The vehicle has reported odometer reading when purchased in 2013 was 85,180 it was serviced at a dealer in 2014 reported 105,077 and then again serviced at dealer in 2015 miles reported 141,439 then serviced prior 4 days before the auction which reported 170,716 there been no reported vehicle service or mileage with the next owner since it was purchased in 2017....This is why I believe the currant mile on the odometer of 159,00 is much lower then it should be.....I'm guessing the instrument cluster had gone bad and was swapped with one from the junk yard is there any way that a mechanic would be able to confirm if that had occurred.
Unless Ford does things differently the mileage is stored in the truck's ECU, there's no memory in the instrument cluster. However, a Ford dealer would have the electronic gear required to reset mileage in the ECU (which they should only do if they're swapping in a new ECU).
Imagine that, a used car salesman lying! Good job catching them, and a good example for the rest of us to check the paper trail.
Sometimes clerical errors do occur when someone "fat-fingers" and transposes numbers when entering the mileage when being serviced, but those are easy to spot because the subsequent data entries follows like it supposed to and make sense. Surprised the mileage didn't get captured when the 2nd owner registered the vehicle in 2017, hmmm that's strange too. Good catch !!! Sometimes you have to read between the lines when looking over a carfax or autocheck. It's something I scrutinize thoroughly when looking at a used car. I think in 2004 they had digital odometers, so mileage is stored in the computer.
