Odometer rewinding - a trick to trick used car buyers

When buying a used car, the general psychology of customers is that the less the car has been driven, the better the remaining quality and they are willing to pay a high price. Taking advantage of that point of view, some sellers have intentionally rolled back the odometer (Odometer - abbreviated Odo) to deceive buyers. There are also cases where the odometer is objectively rolled back due to repairs, replacements or the car has had many owners, the previous owners rolled it back so that the next person does not know the origin.

The most common case today is imported cars from abroad. For non-genuine cars, the salon will not be able to bring them back to the country if they are new. To import, the car must be used for 6 months or more or have traveled over 10,000 km. Therefore, the car will be "magically" transformed into a used car by rewinding the odometer.

In reality, rewinding the odometer is risky because just checking the manufacturer can detect whether it has been rewinded or not. However, with cars that have been used for a short time but run too much, sellers still use rewinding to make the car's profile look better. More importantly, the customer's psychology of preferring cars with little run time is still the key.

So how does odometer rewinding work?

For mechanical watches

The seller will disassemble the circuit board and adjust it by hand. This type of work is mainly on old cars, and is still quite rare.

For digital watches

To rewind the electronic type, you need to use a machine to intervene in the car's ECU. The usage is quite simple, just connect the machine to the ECU through the plug at the bottom of the ECU, then the computer will do the rest. The location of the ECU depends on each car, it can be behind the dashboard in the clock position, next to the glove box, under the left arm of the driver's seat or in the engine compartment.

According to Vietnamese mechanics, most car brands can rewind the odometer, only a few models cannot. Most cars that cannot be intervened are luxury cars and rare cars because buying a license to unlock the device will be expensive. In Vietnam, Cadillac Escalade is almost the only model that cannot be intervened. Each type of car requires a separate machine plug-in wire to connect. The price of buying a rewinding machine is about tens of millions, the cost of one rewind is about 300,000 - 1,500,000 VND depending on the car model and difficulty.

In fact, the Odo regulator, in addition to changing the odometer, also has many other functions such as: radio calibration, airbag warning light programming, engine fault identification, and setting up some electronic functions on the vehicle.

How to detect if the odometer has been rolled back?

For luxury cars, just plug in the tester to detect the old ODO history. Meanwhile, with popular cars, it will be very difficult if the car is not under the manufacturer's warranty.

- Look at the level of deterioration of the interior to evaluate. For example, if the mileage is low but the leather seats are worn out, it is likely that the car's odometer has been rolled back.

- Car lights: brightness of lights, new or old headlights.

- Tires: for cars under 3 years old, the tires have been replaced but the mileage is only 20,000-30,000 km, then the car is likely worn out. Because tires only need to be replaced after 50,000 km.

- Test drive: drive to check the rigidity of the chassis and the firmness of the connection of the details.

- Go to a reputable, authorized garage for inspection.

In fact, Odo does not always reflect the true quality of the car, but is only an index for reference and monitoring the condition. If the car has been driven a lot but has been regularly maintained and well taken care of, the quality is higher than a car that has been driven less but is not cared for by the owner. In the US, there are cars that have run over a million miles, or more than 1.6 million km, but still operate well.