Ok, I know this is the type of thing I should have checked before I bought the car. I would have bought it anyways though. I was looking at the carfax report and the only issue I see is that in June of 2001 my car had almost 150,000 miles. almost exactly 2 years later it shows as having 88,000. Is there any reason aside from someone changing the odometer or setting it back that my car would lose 62,000 miles? If the car shows 103,000 now on the odometer do I assume that it really has 165,000?

I welcome all responses.

thanks

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I'm not sure if it's legal, but i've heard of people resetting the odo when they replace the engine. Or maybe they just replaced the odo without bothering to set the correct mileage.

I remember once about 10+ years ago (whole different car)swapping out my 85mph speed for one that was I think 125 or even 145, and since it came from a junkyard it had much lower miles. Later on it hurt me because it was in an accident and the insurance company said no way it had 30K must be 130K and gave me much less for the car.

Anyways back on track. A few months ago I replaced the seized engine that was in the car when I bought it), apparently that engine was bad and is being remanufactured right now. If they ever call and say its done, was supposed to be ready tuesday.

So do I get to change the mileage back some? lol

thanks

A lot of people when they upgrade clusters might not bother to reset the mileage to actual mileage. If it's a digital cluster it's nearly impossible to reset it without having a very expensive reprogrammer.

Or others as stated like to set it back to zero if they are installing a crate motor.

When I upgraded from 85 to 120 I simply transfered the mileage odometer itself from my old 85 cluster to the 120 cluster. No fiddling with dialing in the original mileage, yada yada.

As far as I know the mileage concern is with the car even if it was pushed or drug 80K miles. In the eyes of the law the new engine or a used one for that matter has nothing to do with the miles the car has traveled.

For your own information just jot down the mileage at the time of engine swap on a label & stick it under the hood.

if the odometer really was tampered with, you will see silver lines on it since the fiero has a tamper proof odometer

A what?? Tamper proof?
I took my gauge cluster apart, and while I was in there I cleaned the odometer of a fine layer of grime that had somehow built up on it. I ended up rotating the 10th mile number all the way around to clean it, and all I was doing was turning the drive gear by hand. One could easily change the mileage that way.

quote Originally posted by mysticfire6602: if the odometer really was tampered with, you will see silver lines on it since the fiero has a tamper proof odometer

It's not tamperproof...

There is a little flimsy, (intentionally) piece of film on the bottom that if you attempt a brute force movement of the wheels that little film will break and the wheels will no longer line up properly and you will see the silver lines.

That little film is easily removed, and replaced, so to say it's tamperproof is a stretch. I can change a Fiero odometer to any number I want in a matter of minutes.

Manufacturers have all switched to digital odometers and store the information in a custom chip as well as probably in two or three other modules in the car. You need thousands of dollars of equipment to reprogram the cluster and if you just swap clusters you will get a mismatch among the computers and set a code.

It's much harder to mess with the new cars, but a Fiero can be tweaked pretty easy.

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