jmattioni

I recently purchased a 2018 S560 from a local BMW dealer that I generally trust. When I got the car home I ran my Foxwell scanner on the car. It brought up a fault relating to the odometer value being "implausible". This got my attention but wasn't hard evidence. I did learn that there are multiple modules in the car that keep track of mileage. The two main ones are the instrument cluster (odometer) and the ignition lock. There may be others, I think the transmission.

I now have a Xentry system and just ran a diagnostic on the car. In particular, I connected to the instrument cluster and ignition lock modules and, sure enough, they disagree on the mileage! The instrument cluster reports a mileage of 23782.36 miles (which is what shows on the display) and the ignition lock reports a mileage of 44531.75 miles. A related test of the instrument cluster shows odometer reading as 38274km, which is consistent with the shown miles, but it also shows an item "Internal data on travel distance" = "IMPLAUSIBLE". This is probably the fault reported by the Foxwell. I take that to mean that all the modules holding mileage don't agree.

I've heard that you can buy a module that plugs into the OBD port that causes mileage to stop accumulating. Just plug it in, drive to your hearts content and remember to unplug it before going in for service or inspection. Nasty stuff. So, this may be what a prior owner did, though it apparently only worked on the odometer and not on other modules in the car.

We're not talking about an extreme deviation here and so there was no clue from wear and tear that the car may have 20K more miles on it than shown on the odometer. But mileage is a big factor for Mercedes vehicles and another 20K would have probably reduced the price at least $5K in my estimation.

My question is whether this is actual evidence of tampering? Anyone have experience on how I should proceed?

Thanks

streborx

You're talking about the actual mileage being nearly 2x the odometer display! That's significant IMO. Go to an MB dealer and get a second scan/opinion. Surely when you bought the vehicle, the BMW dealer provided you an odometer disclosure certificate assuring you that the odometer reading is correct. With evidence that the mileage has been tampered with, you should be able to return the vehicle for a full refund if that's what you want. While the dealer might be an innocent intermediary, there was still a misrepresentation made. The dealer can chase down the previous owner and take action.

Faast

Odometer tampering is a crime and the BMW dealer might not be familiar or aware of this roll back. The previous owner is on the hook for sure if he did it, BMW won't do it and won't know either hence he traded the car into them or probably bought at an auction.

Have you local mercedes dealer confirm your doubts and then take it up with the BMW dealer. The Mercedes dealer can run a VMI report and may be service history on the car. Did you run the CF on it, that can help with the mileage too

Good Luck

jmattioni

I've bought a couple of BMWs from this dealer over the years. They're a reputable dealership and I'm certain they didn't do it. However, they are my first recourse since they did sell me the car and provided an odometer certificate.

The Xentry software I used to retrieve the data is the very same used by MB dealers, so I'm confident of the data. I'm just not sure if there's other plausible explanations for the discrepancy. One would be replacement of the instrument cluster or the module associated with it. I have the abbreviated VMI that a local MB dealer gave me and it has no evidence that the instrument cluster or module were replaced. Even so, if MB replaced the cluster/module they would have set the correct odometer value on the new cluster, which I know they can do.

I think I need an expert opinion on whether the evidence I have in hand from Xentry is sufficient. I'll have to consult my local MB dealer for guidance.

Thanks for the input.

ygmn

do a carfax and review as they will list service records and mileage recorded at time.

So you can see if it ever was higher then you have now

jmattioni

Here's a copy of the Carfax for the car in question. There's nothing obvious about the mileage in the report other than the car had very low annual mileage. But it's not that unusual for these cars. I'm retired and own two MB cars both of which accumulate less than 5K miles/ yr.

Hindsight is always 20-20 and in retrospect I probably shouldn't have bought this car since there are some red flags in the CF report. The first is that the original owner kept the car less than one year. The original selling dealer either bought the car back or perhaps the original owner just traded it in? Anyway, that's not my main concern right now.

The car is actually in pretty good shape. I resolved a lot of the diagnostic faults I found by just replacing the batteries, which was overdue.

Can anyone identify the likely culprit for the mileage rollback? It would have to be either owner 2 or owner 3.

Faast

Is your odometer in KM (38112 ) I found this document by googling the VIN and found this, not sure what to think of it, the vin looks the same though

file:///C:/Users/ysunf/Downloads/2018S560FaultCodeReportForLeftHeadLamp.pdf

Copy, paste in the tool bar and it would spit it out?

May be you might have ran this report, did you?

jmattioni

Spent about 15 mins talking with the shop foreman at my local MB dealership. He helped convince me that there was no odometer tampering based on some physical evidence. And all for no charge!

He didn't have any more info on hidden travel distance data within the computers, but he did bring up that the tires could be a clue. The VMI and Carfax records show that the tires were changed around 9/22 at about 18K miles. This is just before the 3rd owner bought the car. Based on tire date codes we established that the very same tires are very likely still on the car. The tread remaining on the tires right now indicates about 6K miles of wear. This is plausible if the car currently has about 23K miles on it, per the odometer. It would not be possible for those tires to have 26K miles on them. So, a 43K mileage would have required the 3rd owner to get tires. There's no record of that and it's also likely if they did the date codes on the tires would be at least a year later than what's on the car.

I'm relieved. I didn't want to go through the whole process of dealing with odo tampering. And I also didn't want the car to end up having 43K miles on it! So overall I'm satisfied.

Don't know what the deal is with the Ignition Lock module showing 43K miles, but it appears that's not always hard evidence of tampering.

Thanks to @ygmn and @Faast for your input.

jmattioni

@Faast That link is to local storage on ysunf's computer so I can't access it, but that's an interesting find. I am chasing down a problem with the left headlight, so it almost definitely applies to my car. I recently had the local MB dealer reflash and recode both headlamp control modules. There was a software update flashed. So far the codes are gone, though I haven't driven the car much at night. The headlights were working, they just weren't doing advanced functions like automatic high beam. I will eventually resolve that one.

Thanks.