The counter has been removed. How to find out the real mileage of a car?

Used car mileage is usually the third piece of information a potential buyer wants to know after price and year. How to find out what the actual meter reading is?

The so-called counter-withdrawal is a practice known since the beginning of the 90s, that is, since the massive influx of used cars from the West to Poland. In those days, seizing an analog meter from fraudsters was, with rare exceptions, a simple act. In turn, it was almost impossible for potential buyers to detect this fact.

Therefore, experts advise judging the mileage of a car by the degree of wear of such elements as the steering wheel, pedals, seats, upholstery, window handles. If the odometer showed that the car had relatively low mileage and the above items were badly worn, there was a good chance that the car had an odometer adjustment. Currently, the rule still applies to pay attention to the condition of the steering wheel, seats and upholstery. However, there are other methods for checking the actual mileage of a car.

The easiest way is to use one of the sites where, after entering the VIN, the history of the car will be displayed. Such a website is operated, inter alia, by the Central Vehicle Registry (https://historiapojazd.gov.pl), from where the history of the vehicle can be downloaded. The data for this report comes from inspection stations and is entered during the mandatory technical inspection of the car. They also indicate the mileage of the car, but only based on what the diagnostician sees on the odometer.

Therefore, it is not ironclad proof of the car's actual mileage. In addition, the report includes cars registered only in Poland. If the vehicle has just arrived from abroad, we will not find anything about it on this page. However, it does provide some rationale to potential buyers of domestically registered used cars. If the data on the meter does not match what is written on the CEP page, then there is a good chance that the meter has been recalled.

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Electronic Documents

 Since more and more electronically controlled components have been installed in vehicles, the ability to document a vehicle's actual mileage has increased. However, this requires special equipment. Electronics are also required to reset the counter, but the process itself is relatively simple in most models. All you need is a laptop with the right software and you can reset the counter in a few minutes.

However, a large amount of electronics in the car allows reading data from other components, so that the history of the car can be determined with a high probability. For example, you can read data from the engine control unit. They contain information such as changing the oil or connecting diagnostic tools, and in some models, drivers include a copy of the vehicle's mileage. Transmission controllers may contain similar data.

The vehicle history can also be read from some audio devices. Their memory also stores error data (eg CD jam, more serious damage), which is combined with mileage data. Mileage, although an average, can also be determined from the master cylinder controller. According to experts, on average, there are two brakes per kilometer. Therefore, if the data shows that there were 500 of these inhibitions, then after dividing by two, 250 XNUMX comes out. km. Of course, this is not a reliable method, but if the result differs significantly from the waveform shown in the numerator, this should give some food for thought.