JRodam

First let me say I'm looking forward to a bright future with this community.

Anyways I recently went to one of my local dealers and purchased a 2004 F150 with only 49k miles on the odometer. Prior to my purchase I was provided a auto vehicle report via autocheck and everything came back clean and consistent. One week later I decided to purchase a CarFax to see if I can possibly find some previous service records for the truck when I came across what very well may be a MASSIVE odometer rollback. I would be very thankful if I can get some opinions on this matter and hopefully put my mind at ease. In the picture provided in the link you can see that on 10/27/04 the truck was reported to have 2,502 miles at the Ford service center. Fast forward one year to 11/08/05 the truck now has a reported 76,533 miles. Fast forward another year and now the truck has a reported 132,463 miles! Now the next year has a reported 17,601 miles and it's consistent anywhere from 4-8k miles a year from that point on for the next 10 years. What I am hoping happened is the extra '3' on each of the odometer readings is a clerical error which would make the true miles 7,653 and 13,246 respectively. It seems both of the same high mileage readings came from the same emissions center and perhaps the extra 3 at the end of the number is to classify the vehicle into a certain category? Maybe this particular smog center recorded the tenths of a mile? 75k miles in a year just seems a tad up there.

CarFax:


Autocheck:


Link to CarFax:
https://www.carfax.com/showroom/#/re...RW12W84KA75620

Martian

Sounds like they swapped out the instrument cluster and didn't carry over the true mileage. I knew that was way too few miles for an 04. Talk to them about it. IIRC, it's a legal requirement that the true mileage stays with the truck.


edit: after re-reading your post, a typo also sounds like a very good possibility...

JRodam

The truck is in pristine condition and nothing really screams this truck went 170k+ miles. My best guess would be if everything checks out maybe this truck was only used every so often maybe for the occasional tow. The odd thing is if the odometer was indeed rolled back that would of been 75k miles in a single year and then the carfax reads 4-8k miles a year consistently for the next 10 years. My next step I suppose is to have a mechanic look it over and get a professional opinion

casey.mikl

If the odometer was rolled back. That's a federal offense. I would go back. It is illegal to roll an odometer back or fake the milage of a vehicle.

Mod (Ret.)

What model is this truck? I ask because cluster swaps are very common on the 2004 to 2008 trucks that did not come with a tach. Many owners of XL's and STX models would swap out their clusters to an FX, Lariat, or XLT to gain a tach. While it's illegal to not have the odometer flashed with the correct mileage, there's no stopping someone to simply swap out the cluster with one that had a lower odometer reading.

In any event, you may want to contact the dealer that you bought it from, and bring it to their attention.

JRodam

It's the XLT so it already has the tachometer. Fortunately for me I work at a police department and I'm considering running the VIN and contacting the previous owner and try to get answers

Mod (Ret.)

Let us know what you find. A previous owner may still have swapped out the cluster for a lower odometer one. They sell for under a hundred bucks on ebay, and it takes less then 20 minutes to swap them.

JRodam

Will do. I already brought the issue up with the dealer and he is trying to ensure me it's a clerical error it just bothers me it happened two years consecutively. The odd thing is though the mileage doesn't show on the autocheck just the CarFax even though the smog test was still reported.

casey.mikl

Does the milage stay on the computer? If you were to hook a good scanner to the obd2 port, would it pull up the milage?

Mod (Ret.)

No. The mileage on these years at least, is not stored in the PCM, but rather in the cluster, hence the reason for them needing to be re-flashed if they are replaced.