Used Car Buying Guide – Being aware of a clocked car

No, we are not going to tell you exactly how to clock a car, but we are instead going to bring you attention to how easy it is to do so. The reason is that clocking a car, that is changing the milometer reading to a lower value than the car’s real mileage, can enormously increase what the car will fetch in the market; changing a car’s apparent mileage from 110,000 to 60,000 can double its apparent value. If you buy a used car that has been clocked, then you have been defrauded and you could be driving in a relatively unsafe vehicle that is worth only a fraction of the money you for it.

There are three ways to clock a car. One is to use a specialist electronic clocking device, another is to use a laptop or hand held computer or PDA running a readily available software application, and a third which is only applicable to the old analogue milometer’s is to use an electric drill to physically turn back the mileage.

Firstly you should be aware that clocking a car is not in itself against the law. It is allowed in order to carry out mileage correction, for instance if a milometer needs replacing by a new one. It is only misrepresenting the cars mileage that is illegal, but as has been demonstrated recently, to do so can result in a custodial sentence.

Car clocking devices can be bought on the internet for as little as £500. You can buy car clocking software for around £100 and if that is too much, you can buy software that you can use to compute the codes you need to send to your specific car the change the mileage. If you don’t want to do it yourself, then you can use so called mileage correction services which advertise to fix damaged milometer.

There are ways to detect if the mileage shown on the milometer is correct. You can check the car’s paperwork and the mileage entered at services and on MOT certificates. You can look at such items as the amounts of wear on the driver’s seat and on the steering wheel and see how worn are the pedals and gear lever, you can check the car’s data history, but none of these methods are foolproof.

If you are looking into buying a new car visit www.motors.co.uk.