hi, new to the forum and have a pretty weird question.
i have more than enough evidence to suspect that i bought a bmw with a rolled back odometer. if i am right, there is a very big chance that this dealership has been selling salvaged or rebuilt bmw's with rolled back odometers..the dealership is luxury motors and it's located in the chicago land area.

what i am basically trying to find out is is there any way to turn back the odometer on a e46 323ci 2000 or a way to unplug the cluster odometer and then replug it.

i heard that you could also change the instrument cluster from a bmw with less miles on it. in either case i'm trying to find out if there is a computer in the bmw that keeps the mileage and can't be changed like the odometer?

if there is, i need to find out where i need to go and what i need to do to find out the the computer in the car has the same miles recorded as the odometer or if there is any way to tell if the miles were turned back. by the way, i called bmw and they said they could try to check it for 116 dollars which i think is ridiculous.

any help in helping me bring down a shady dealer would be really appreciated!

What's the evidence you have? Does it come up clean on Carfax?

heres the evidence:

I bought the car on 6/24/06 with 47,648 miles.

=car fax reports the vehicle having 50,069 miles on 09/09/2005.

auto check also reports the car having 50,069 miles on 09/09/2005 and then it reports the car having 47,645 miles on 05/23/2006.

basically according to carfax and auto check, the car in about 9 months time, was turned back about 3 thousand miles. so what i'm assuming since someone had to be driving the car during those nine months, it was turned back somewhere around 10k.

another reason i think that is this: every 15k bmw gets oil change, that's what the computer is programed to. every 2nd oil change so 30 and 60k computer instructs you to get an inspection which runs about 800 dollars. my inspection popped up at 50,220 according to the odometer.

another reason i believe the odometer was turned back is because according to car fax, my car in 9/14/04 had 44k. my dealer is trying to tell me that when switching titiles, someone made a mistake saying that the car had 50,069 on 09/09/05. now i understand that mistakes happen, but at that time this car was a lease vehicle. and if someone made a mistake switch ing titles and saying the car had 50k on it that means that between 9/14/04 and 06/24/06, almost two years time! the car went from only 44k to 47k!!!

i find it really hard to believe that someone would pay hundreds of dollars every month to lease a bmw and drive it only 1500 miles a year!

any one that can help or has experienced something like this, please let me know!
thanks

What year is the car? I believe newer BMW's have milage recorded in 2 spots ...1) on the physical cluster and 2) electronically somewhere else like the ECU.

You should be able to pull the stored ECU mileage and compare the two numbers.

the car is a 2000. how do i go about getting the mileage out of the ecu? who is the cheapest to see about this?

thanks

maybe its a type-o on car fax

Carfax, Auotcheck, etc, aren't "the last word in accuracy" since the information is from voluntary submission and subject to human error. A better check would be the BMW service history records. If you don't trust one dealer, have a different dealer pull up the service history, or get BMWNA to do it.

I believe that mileage is stored in more than one module (three on an E39) and a dealer with a DIS or similar can cross check the modules for signs of tamering with the recorded mileage. If the cluster has been fiddled with the tamper light would on.

the car is a 2000. how do i go about getting the mileage out of the ecu? who is the cheapest to see about this?

Possibly a very well equiped indy might have the necessary software, but unlikely. Most likely it's a dealer-only item, and the $116 you were quoted is a typical hour of labor charge there. Then, I guess maybe you have to worry about one dealer covering another's ass...

I'd be inclined to let it go. The fact that they (maybe) rolled it back only 10K seems a bit unlikely - a 47k car isn't worth alot more than a 57k car. If it were a 50k difference, then that'd be another story...

Also, the inspection I & II intervals are not hard-wired to specific mileage intervals. How hard the car was driven is taken into account. Time passed may also be considered - not sure about this.

the reason i am convinced that the vehicle's odometer was tampered with is because i know a leased vehicle did not drive only 3000 miles in almost two years. no one leases a vehicle to use it on the weekends! if you look at my previous post, on 09/04 the vehicle was reported at 44k and i bought it on 06/06 at 47k. how does someone drive a vehicle that is leased only 3k in two years?

in either case whether its a carfax and autocheck mistake or it has been rolled back, i am stuck with a vehicle that no one wants to buy or let me trade in. i just lost alot of money! isn't the dealer still liable to buy the car back from me since they should have inspected carfax or autocheck before they sold the vehicle?

It sound like you just don't want the car anylonger. For what reason I don't know. There is no reason for the mileage to be rolled back 10,000 miles. (like stated before it doesn't increase the value.) The mileage is recorded in the Lamp control module and the instrument cluster. If the cluster is replaced the mileage is transfered from the LCM to the cluster via GT1 or DIS. If the LCM is replaced it would be vise versa there is no way to change the mileage. It does not roll back just by putting it in reverse either so forget that. If both the LCM and the cluster was replaced at the sametime which I highly doubt the mileage would be back to zero and the tamper dot would be on. I highly doubt that the mileage was rolled back. Autocheck probably got their mileage from carfax or vise versa. Which could be human eror. As for someone leasing a vehicle and only driving it 3000 miles a year, you cannot say that is immpossible. How do you know it wasn't traded from dealer to dealer for two year. No one would have been driving it much them. If you need anymore info on why the mileage is probably not rolled back i'm sure so of the other techs can come up with some.

I'd let it go also. I myself tend to keep cars for a very long time and when I buy a new one, it is because the old one got wrecked or it just got old...

When did you have this evidence? If you had it before, and you still bought the car, then you didn't care too much about the "evidence" at the time.

I'm not sure about this one, but I think the inspection notifications are also affected by the last reset time.

People can lease a vehicle and drive it as little as they want. Do you know if it was a car the parents leased so their son/daughter could drive it when they were visiting home from college? I'm guessing you don't know for sure, so just because you wouldn't do it, doesn't mean someone else wouldn't do it.