Clocked cars?? car history checks accuracy?

bigdogbarking

I have been looking at an awful lot of cars for the last few weeks, a large number of them from "norn iron" and a few were uk imports.

While doing the checks on a number of them i noticed that the mileages submitted by the BVRLA and RMI were vastly different than the sellers mileages and the mileages on the odometer.
Particularly cars that were uk imports on irish plates, there were major differences in mileages( up to 100k on one car!!!)

I didn't realise it was such a common issue, i thought it was just the odd car, or are the figures submitted incorrectly at times?

In one particular cae tne private seller claimed he had mot certs to prove the mileages, he just had to find it in his house:rolleyes: but no service book though.
still waiting on him to ring back to tell me he has it!

What are the legal positions on clocked cars? The seller denied any knowledge of it and swore the mileage was correct although he only had the car 4 months!

Should there be somewhere to report alleged clocked cars?
Should there even be a name and shame thread?

I'm curious on peoples views, like i said i didn't think it was such an issue here. Thank god for car checks at least.

Absurdum

name and shame if you can provide some evidence, you can also contact the National Consumer Agency and give them all the details

bigdogbarking

Absurdum wrote: »

name and shame if you can provide some evidence, you can also contact the National Consumer Agency and give them all the details

can the National Consumer Agency intervene if its a private seller?

As far as evidence goes, i've got the car reports on both the irish registrations and the former uk reg.

I don't want to appear to finger point or whatever but i can pm the details if anyone is concerned?

For the record it was a grey 2006 diesel saab 9-3 , maybe the ad is on donedeal?;)

CaraFawn

I would imagine it would be extremelly difficult to prove that the guy/garage that sold you the car has clocked it...

Now the best thing to do to avoid this I suppose, is to gather as much as paper work as possible, service bills, MOT/NCT certs etc...call dealers or HQ to check service history.

Do no buy a car without service history period, unless you know 100% what you are doing and do not mind potential issues.

Motorcheck

Hi there. Unfortunately clocking is still a serious problem in Ireland and something we at Motorcheck are working hard to restrict. If you'd like to PM me the registration number of the car and where it's currently advertised I'd be happy to check it out and report to the NCA if necessary.

nefertiri

Is it possible to check if a car has been clocked? I bought a second hand VW Polo two years ago and have had nothing but problems since. The latest being that it looks like the brake pedal was replaced with one from a scrap yard and the control unit appears to have been knocked upside down.

I'm beginning to wonder what else is going to go wrong with it. It is only a 2004 model.

Anan1

nefertiri wrote: »

Is it possible to check if a car has been clocked? I bought a second hand VW Polo two years ago and have had nothing but problems since. The latest being that it looks like the brake pedal was replaced with one from a scrap yard and the control unit appears to have been knocked upside down.

I'm beginning to wonder what else is going to go wrong with it. It is only a 2004 model.

I'm going to take a wild punt here and guess that you bought without a service history?

DaveJac

came across alot of this with UK imports cars only a year old being clocked, had a few customers where i worked last come in after buying UK imports looking to get jobs done under warranty when the details were imputted to the manufactures system milage's were way off and then you have no cover im afraid took the savings out of importing

-Corkie-

Anan1 wrote: »

I'm going to take a wild punt here and guess that you bought without a service history?

A verified sevice history is what you should be after as in you should be able to call the garage in question and quote invoice/job numbers to verify the car was serviced.

Vertakill

It's funny that you brought this up now because I was going to start a new thread about this! I'm in the exact same boat as you bigdogbarking and all these car checks are not cheap!

I was about to walk out the door to head down to Newbridge to look at a car on Sunday and when we went through the car checks we found the car that I was going to view had a worrying mileage discrepancy.

http://cars.donedeal.ie/for-sale/cars/1363463

That's the car there with 43k miles. In 2002, in the UK, it was MOT'd with 52k miles. So, in 8 years, it's managed to do -9k miles which is an impressive feat. The last log of any kind was 2003 in the UK, until it was registered in Ireland in 2008... so 5 years of nothingness, not to mention there's no sign of the car ever being exported from the UK... so make your own conclusions on that.
I'd personally estimate the car has, at the very least, 100k miles on it by now.

The seller claimed he didn't know about this but... I have my doubts.

Judging by his photos of the car, he has 1 or 2 other cars outside his driveway with 'For Sale' signs on them which would indicate to me that he buys/sells cars from his house privately. So he'd want to be very foolish to be in the buy/sell trade if he doesn't do car checks, not to mention the car was very cheaply priced. He also had some sort of Pakistani or Indian accent over the phone. Have his house address saved in my SatNav- would love to pay him a visit one day!

Cost about 40 or 50 euro in total for the Irish checks (which uncovered it was an import) and then the UK checks. 50 euro down but at least I didn't get conned.

(Have the autochecks saved here in an email).

redvee81

I used cartell.ie before for a car history.found them really good.Hope this helps:)

nogoodnamesleft

Doing someone a favour here at work at the moment (transferring a used ECU from a crashed vehicle in place for a water damaged unit) had to look into disabling the immobliser function in case it throws up a fault. With digital dashes especially older VAG group cars its much too easy to roll back the odometer (mileage correction :mad:) about 5mins work.

The ECU on certain cars independantly calculates the mileage covered. Best way to verify history is NCT certs and verifying service history. If imported the previous reg will be listed on the registration doc.

Motorcheck

Vertakill wrote: »

It's funny that you brought this up now because I was going to start a new thread about this! I'm in the exact same boat as you bigdogbarking and all these car checks are not cheap!

I was about to walk out the door to head down to Newbridge to look at a car on Sunday and when we went through the car checks we found the car that I was going to view had a worrying mileage discrepancy.

http://cars.donedeal.ie/for-sale/cars/1363463

That's the car there with 43k miles. In 2002, in the UK, it was MOT'd with 52k miles. So, in 8 years, it's managed to do -9k miles which is an impressive feat. The last log of any kind was 2003 in the UK, until it was registered in Ireland in 2008... so 5 years of nothingness, not to mention there's no sign of the car ever being exported from the UK... so make your own conclusions on that.
I'd personally estimate the car has, at the very least, 100k miles on it by now.

The seller claimed he didn't know about this but... I have my doubts.

Judging by his photos of the car, he has 1 or 2 other cars outside his driveway with 'For Sale' signs on them which would indicate to me that he buys/sells cars from his house privately. So he'd want to be very foolish to be in the buy/sell trade if he doesn't do car checks, not to mention the car was very cheaply priced. He also had some sort of Pakistani or Indian accent over the phone. Have his house address saved in my SatNav- would love to pay him a visit one day!

Cost about 40 or 50 euro in total for the Irish checks (which uncovered it was an import) and then the UK checks. 50 euro down but at least I didn't get conned.

(Have the autochecks saved here in an email).

Hi there,

I've looked into the history of the car on our database and it looks like there is a serious discrepancy with the mileage. Motorcheck automatically includes the UK history with every Irish registered car that was imported so I was able to see from the database that there are a number of UK readings that contradict the current figure.

In terms of reporting the seller - there really is only one avenue open to you. The National Consumer Agency have a form on their website that you could complete. They will determine if the seller qualifies as a 'Trader' and accordingly falls under consumer protection legislation.

Other than that it's really a case of 'Buyer Beware'.

PS. I notice from your post that you've already spent quite a bit on checks for this car. Maybe next time you'll consider Motorcheck.ie ? We include all the relevant information on one report so there's no requirement for additional purchases when the car turns out to be an import.

Best of luck!

Matt Simis

Motorcheck wrote: »

PS. I notice from your post that you've already spent quite a bit on checks for this car. Maybe next time you'll consider Motorcheck.ie ? We include all the relevant information on one report so there's no requirement for additional purchases when the car turns out to be an import.

Best of luck!

The "other" brand report gave the UK Reg and confirmed the mileage was ok within the state (ie the clocking was done prior to that). Would Motortell have given the UK Mileage and details from the same EUR35 initial purchase?

Motorcheck

Yep (assuming you mean Motor'check' ) - provided we had it at the time of the enquiry of course...

Benny Cake

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread but it deals with some questions I have... I've been looking at allot of used cars in the past few weeks and quite a number of them are UK imports, one of my main concerns is buying a clocked motor. Some questions:
1. Can motorcheck.ie give a report on uk cars? If so will they have mileage data for 06-08 cars?
2. Is a full service history from main dealer a fair indication that a car is genuine?
3. Is there any way of interrogating a cars CPU to see if the odometer has been tampered with?

Thanks for the help folks...

K

bigdogbarking

Motorcheck was only able to give the irish history, although it provided the old uk reg as far as i can remember, i know he posts here regularly so if i'm wrong feel free to correct me.
It is certainly worthwhile to run the uk checks and some of them offer deals, say, 5 checks for £25 or somewhere along those lines which actually were quite good value especially if you are gonna be checking a few.
A full service history,imo, although desirable, is in fairness simply just some stamps and signatures.who is to say all dealers are 100% honest?:rolleyes:
AFAIK there is no way to tell if a car has been clocked through the cpu.
Just my 2 cents

Benny Cake

bigdogbarking wrote: »

Motorcheck was only able to give the irish history, although it provided the old uk reg as far as i can remember, i know he posts here regularly so if i'm wrong feel free to correct me.
It is certainly worthwhile to run the uk checks and some of them offer deals, say, 5 checks for £25 or somewhere along those lines which actually were quite good value especially if you are gonna be checking a few.
A full service history,imo, although desirable, is in fairness simply just some stamps and signatures.who is to say all dealers are 100% honest?:rolleyes:
AFAIK there is no way to tell if a car has been clocked through the cpu.
Just my 2 cents

Cheers Bigdog,
I was thinking more or less the same myself... I suppose by contacting the dealer referenced in the service history it might be possible to verify the cars history.....
When you say to run some UK checks are there uk alternatives to motorcheck that can check the cars uk history??

Anan1

D_Red_Army wrote: »

When you say to run some UK checks are there uk alternatives to motorcheck that can check the cars uk history??

I use www.hpi.co.uk - it's much cheaper if you ring them.

mickdw

D_Red_Army wrote: »

3. Is there any way of interrogating a cars CPU to see if the odometer has been tampered with?

Thanks for the help folks...

K

Many cars (VAG certainly) have an independent mileage record in the ecu.
Perhaps the clockers can change this too but worth a check anyway. I also believe it is normal to have minor difference between clock mileage & ecu mileage as they are calculated seperately. This can be checked with vagcom.

Benny Cake

Anan1 wrote: »

I use www.hpi.co.uk - it's much cheaper if you ring them.

Thanks mate, out of interest.... where do these companies get the mileage info? I assume most of it comes from MOT records but for cars that have not yet been MOT'd is there any mileage record for these??

Vertakill

D_Red_Army wrote: »

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread but it deals with some questions I have... I've been looking at allot of used cars in the past few weeks and quite a number of them are UK imports, one of my main concerns is buying a clocked motor. Some questions:
1. Can motorcheck.ie give a report on uk cars? If so will they have mileage data for 06-08 cars?
2. Is a full service history from main dealer a fair indication that a car is genuine?
3. Is there any way of interrogating a cars CPU to see if the odometer has been tampered with?

Thanks for the help folks...

K

Read the 2 posts directly above yours by Motorcheck and Matt Simis ... ????

He clearly states that, if you Motorcheck a car and it turns out to be a UK import, Motorcheck will display the information (like mileage) of the car when it was in the UK as well as the standard Irish information (if there is any information on record - assuming it's had a service in the last 4 years or been MOT'd...).

That's exactly what my circumstance was and that's exactly what the Motorcheck representative explained in the post(s) above.

Vertakill

mickdw wrote: »

Many cars (VAG certainly) have an independent mileage record in the ecu.
Perhaps the clockers can change this too but worth a check anyway. I also believe it is normal to have minor difference between clock mileage & ecu mileage as they are calculated seperately. This can be checked with vagcom.

I read somewhere, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, that VAG cars are some of the easiest to clock the mileage on.

Benny Cake

Vertakill wrote: »

Read the 2 posts directly above yours by Motorcheck and Matt Simis ... ????

He clearly states that, if you Motorcheck a car and it turns out to be a UK import, Motorcheck will display the information (like mileage) of the car when it was in the UK as well as the standard Irish information (if there is any information on record - assuming it's had a service in the last 4 years or been MOT'd...).

That's exactly what my circumstance was and that's exactly what the Motorcheck representative explained in the post(s) above.

Keep your underpants on Vertakill, if you read my post clearly you'd see I was asking about 06-08 cars, if they haven't been MOT'd can motorcheck still do a mileage check......

Vertakill

D_Red_Army wrote: »

Keep your underpants on Vertakill, if you read my post clearly you'd see I was asking about 06-08 cars, if they haven't been MOT'd can motorcheck still do a mileage check......

My underpants are fine thankyouverymuch.

A 06 car in the UK has got to be MOT'd once or possibly twice (it's annual for cars 3+ years old) so, the mileage should be recorded if it spent more than 3 years in the UK.


The only way I can foresee an 06-08 car not having a log of the mileage from it's UK or Irish records is if someone were to buy a car brand new in the UK and bring it to Ireland within 36 months and then do the services on the car themselves in Ireland and not get the car NCT'd (which is possible if it's less than 4 years old).

Benny Cake

Vertakill wrote: »

My underpants are fine thankyouverymuch.

A 06 car from the UK has got to be MOT'd about 4 times (it's annual) so, the mileage should be recorded if it spent more than 1 year in the UK.

The only way I can foresee an 06-08 car not having a log of the mileage from it's UK or Irish records is if someone were to buy a car brand new in the UK and bring it to Ireland before 12 months and then do the services on the car themselves in Ireland and not get the car NCT'd (which is possible if it's less than 4 years old).

Cheers, thanks for that..... I didn't know the MOT was an annual thing, thought it only applied to cars over a certain age (like our NCT). There should be no bother checking the mileage on the cars I'm looking at....

Vertakill

D_Red_Army wrote: »

Cheers, thanks for that..... I didn't know the MOT was an annual thing, thought it only applied to cars over a certain age (like our NCT). There should be no bother checking the mileage on the cars I'm looking at....

Actually, you're more or less right. It's for cars that are over 3 years old, but then after that it's annual.

So, you can fit that in with the other semi accurate info and you got some sound facts!


(I'm going to edit my other post to reflect the proper information in case it misleads anyone!)

squod

I've had my eclipse cloaked, second from left. Sometimes takes ages to find it.

Motorcheck

Motorcheck provides mileage, insurance data, etc. on all UK cars as well as Irish cars. The mileage readings we source come from a variety of places like leasing companies, servicing chains, dvla, etc. Unfortunately the MOT in the UK doesn't release its mileage readings to any car history provider but you can obtain it yourself for free if you have the correct documentation. You can visit this link to find out more.

njak

Not sure about some of the service providers of car history checks; I used one last year when buying a car and it showed up no discrepancy in mileage. Went to trade in the car this week, the garage done a check on mine using a different provider and it turns out it may be clocked. Waiting to hear back from the service provider. It seems different providers use different databases.
Chose provider carefully!

kukori

I guess clocking sometimes is for the less VRT. I mean if the UK car has only 58 k miles, then have to adjust to 158 k miles and VRT gets cheaper. Or not? Then it must be re-clocked to sell.

Sorry to hear that (as i'm from Hungary, the home of clocking... ) the Balkan mentality spreads in western Europe. Everyone wants a bargain, so they give the flavour to you. Of course, they get some extra profit on this as well. On court it won't stand here, i guess, but in central and east Europe the courts don't give a s&it