Vladds

As the title says, I'm curios to know what brand tire was on the car when new.
In the process of shopping for my car, I came across one close to my neighborhood.
It was a 2009 with weirdly low mileage, something like less than 15 K miles. The headlight lenses were not immaculate, but had some mild pitting and the driver's seat had wear on the driver's side outer bolster.

So anyway, the combination of wear that didn't seem to match the mileage and unwillingness of the dealer to let me test drive the car got me to move in a different direction.
But the tires were worn and I was wondering if they would tell the story, in case one of the sets were the factory equipped ones.
I am seeing now that 15K is not possible on one set, but I am also seeing that the Vehicle Master Report does list tire replacements, so having that report and seeing what's on the car can double check the story of the odometer.
I have seen some worrying videos on youtube with people using some sort of gadget to set the mileage to whatever they wanted on a W204. I think I saw this even with a fully enabled Xentry, where probably they were working offline with settings (newer ones don't change any settings without "dialing" into the Mercedes Stuttgart servers, where one's unlicensed software would get banned/locked instantly).

Cee

Can't speak to what tires came on them originally (guessing Michelin or Pirelli), but a CarFax or AutoCheck report should show the registration, emissions, and maintenance events that should include the mileage at the time of the entry.

chrisridebike8

Vladds

There are at least 4 different devices that have videos.

If you type into youtube W204 odometer, there are nothing but "Odometer correction devices"

Some seem like they're only designed to change mileage on the cluster and keep in compliance with odometer number stored on the ECU, some seem to just change it, while in the car to whatever they want to..




And more and more...
Of course, I'd like to see one of the guys that does xentry all the time post their opinion, but without being too knowledgeable with Xentry, I'll say that my opinion is that it's almost easy, with the right equipment. And the right equipment may not be difficult to get either.

Vladds

As far as Carfax, here's what I had noticed couple years ago:
It now went to an almost ridiculous cost per use.
It only catches mileage readings at first sale, ownership change, recalls performed and ... sometimes... at state inspection. I have looked back at cars I've owned, just to see what shows, (years ago you paid and had unlimited carfaxes for 30 days, so I used them for .. whatever). And not all state inspections and readings had been caught.

So, for a one owner car which had recalls done early on, there's not that much.

I did look at the carfax of this car (or another, can't recall ) and a flag for me was that the car had open recalls, for the rear brake lights. My question was, why not do them, if they're free? Maybe because the mileage was going to be recorded and they didn't want the record?

G_Money

Mine had Continental ContiSportContact 3s. It was a CPO, though, the new tires were put on by the dealership.