I bought my 99 gs300 used back in august with 34,000 miles on it. Im just curious to see if there is any way to be able to tell if your car has had its odometer rolled back? I did a carfax before i bought the car and it came up clean.

 

if it has been tampered with, i believe you can check it by seeing if the individual roll numbers are off alignment

 

Not to be rude but the odometer is digital.
the only way that they could have roled back the mileage is by changing the dash cluster so it is possible .what you can do is match the miles on the carfax to the miles when you purchased the car and go from there .also go down to your local lex dealer and you can get the whole service history and that will include mileage also.....good luck

 

can you explain this method? i've never done a carfax so i dont know what comes up.

 

There's ways to stop the odometer.

Ask Jmai22.

 

I don't see how you can roll the odometer back, unless you send out the cluster to some specialty shop to get it done digitally. It's gonna cost $$$ and it's illegal to do it. The shop that can do this kind of stuff will not do it,because of the legal matter.
To stop the odometer is impossible, because the odometer is reading of the speed sensor at the output shaft on your transmission. If you disconnect the speed sensor, then the engine ECM don't know how fast you go, so it will not shift to the second gear. The check engine light will come on and more. The engine ECM will have another back up to get the input, but it will never be right or it will go to failsafe mode.

 

When you purchase a carfax it will have the mileage of when the vehicle was purchased, from where also the mileage of when the vehicle was last registered and the stats :etc

 

oh im sorry im thinking the odometer in my 1st gen LS 400 is the same as his my bad

 

I had done a carfax before i bought the car, and the only thing it showed is that when it was first registered it had 6 miles on it from the dealer. It only had 1 owner before me. The dealer does have records of its service in their computer, i didnt know they log the mileage also, so ill have to check that the next time i go in. Also is there anyway to tell that your car was a fleet vehicle? On the carfax it had said it was registered by a business, although this just could have been a company car.

Thanks,
John

 

If carfax says registered for commercial car, don't worry about it because many individually owned companys buy expensive cars for tax wirteoff purpose.

 

The odometer CAN be rolled back or forward by the dealer and probably by companies like this:

http://www.hispeedometer.com/index.htm


My instrument panel was replaced due to an early bug in the miles-since-last-fueling software (hard to believe, but TSB issued). In that case a new odometer was rolled forward to the same as the old one by the dealer - I had no choice but I did loose 30 miles!

 

Don't be foolish... if it can be done it can be undone.

Digital Odometers "CAN" be rolled back. There is a dealership in my area that sells a ton of Lexus,BMW, Mercedes etc (used car dealer) that engages in this illegal practice. Also, just because it's illegal doesn't mean someone will not do it. It's about money, and for most guilt doesnt set in until you get caught. Anyway, i have a good friend who is an automotive dealer (respectable) and he informed me of an individual who had the ability to alter the mileage on the digital odometers and that he had actually done many for the dealer i mentioned above. WITHOUT CHANGING THE INSTRUMENT CLUSTER! And justifiably this dealer undercuts all others in town by thousands. But blames it on high volume, which he does have.

As far as the carfax stuff goes... it is not a guarantee, but it catches obvious contradictions. For instance if you are an individual who purchased your car new.. did all servicing at the dealer until the warranty was up.. but after that did all maintenance yourself, never going to the dealer or Express Oil change where your mileage could be recorded. If you sold your car say three years later there is nothing to prove that you had actually increased your driving from 15K/year to 30K/year, if you turn your mileage back no one will know.