Is it easy to doctor mb speedos?

[lynall]

No i dont want to do it just wondering as every time i go on e -bay i always do a search for mercedes e430, almost every e430 for sale on e-bay always has 90k or less, which i find hard to believe.

Especially as some of them are old 98 etc.

There was one on there with 220k but it was the exception.

I have also noticed this with any oldish mercedes.

What do you think?.

I remember years ago there were comapnies advertising speedo correction for when you allegedly had a new speedo fitted!




Lynall

 

[popuptoaster]

my dodgy mate reckons cars going digital made his life esier, he just has to get a bloke round who plugs a laptop in instead of taking the dash out to alter the milage, thats why its so important to have old MOT's and put milages on log books when selling cars, makes life easier to check on them later.

 

[verytalldave]

Doctoring any relatively modern car in this way is not "easy". Its certainly not a matter of disconnecting the speedo cable and using an electric drill on reverse ! ! ! !
Anything can be doctored given enough resources and effort - even MOT's and registration documents can be forged.
Ebay is not the most trustworthy of environments in this regard, so you have to always be aware that a cars history might not be all its seller lets on. Having said that, I would say the vast majority are fine.
If you want some sort of guarantee, then employ the AA to do a complete vehicle check. Then at least if you do find out later some wrong doings, you can make a claim.

 

[nick mercedes]

No i dont want to do it just wondering as every time i go on e -bay i always do a search for mercedes e430, almost every e430 for sale on e-bay always has 90k or less, which i find hard to believe.

Especially as some of them are old 98 etc.

There was one on there with 220k but it was the exception.

I have also noticed this with any oldish mercedes.

What do you think?.

I remember years ago there were comapnies advertising speedo correction for when you allegedly had a new speedo fitted!l

The world's full of clocked cars.

Part of the problem is that car buyers in the UK won't touch anything that's done more than 100000...

It's the same with used parts, if you ring up the breakers the engines have always only done 40k.

 

[Rory]

Don't MB's store the mileage in other places - the gearbox ecu springs to mind - that could be checked with StarDiagnose?

 

[nick mercedes]

Don't MB's store the mileage in other places - the gearbox ecu springs to mind - that could be checked with StarDiagnose?

The only ones that are hard to clock are W211, they store it in the ignition switch so that has to be changed too, making it a costly excercise.

 

[Rory]

Thinking about it, I've seen a printout from StarDiagnose on here which showed the mileage at every time the service indicator had been reset - so it may be that changing the total mileage display would leave that record untouched.