How to protect against a clocked car?

antiskeptic

What are the main ways to protect against a clocked car? Main ones I can think of are:

- service history indicating mileage
- NCT certs going back over time

The trouble about wear (to my mind) is that it's very car specific. The paint wore off the gearshift on my Mam's Nissan note in jig time - and it an automatic! The sisters Note has a very worn looking steering wheel at 60K miles

The Audi A4 (which I'm looking out for) tends to have the high upholstering on the seats worn from the driver getting in and out. And you get scuff marks on the fan -/+ buttons since it tends to be a finger nail which contacts them, rather than the pad of the finger.

Surely you could knock 60K miles off a reasonably well looked after / motorway miles car without necessarily being able to pick up the difference in wear?

So how else to tell?

bazz26

Do proper background checks - in conjunction with a full car history report, ring the garages that stamped the service book. Research the seller as well as the car. If something sounds too good/cheap then there is probably a good reason for it.

antiskeptic

bazz26 wrote: »

Do proper background checks - in conjunction with a full car history report, ring the garages that stamped the service book. Research the seller as well as the car. If something sounds too good/cheap then there is probably a good reason for it.

You mean a motorcheck.ie? Do they show up mileage at NCT and the like (the target car owner says they have NCT's going back - remains to be seen)

I rang the garage of a previous target and got the impression the mechanic was favouring the owner of the car. He did mention that fact that the engine had been lifted to access the sump (A4 1.8T's can suffer from blockage of the oil pickup through sludge) which had me thinking "it's unlikely someone would have that work carried out unless an oil warning light went on - in which case bad news"). He was kind of passing over the fact such work had been carried out and tried sell it as a good thing it'd been done. My inclination is to think not.

What would you think of a SIMI garage carrying out the service work? To be taken as a positive vs. some or other chicken-wire fenced side street dealer?

bazz26

Yes the likes of Motorcheck, cartell, etc. Remember though that if your looking at older car then service histories tend to get patchy or non existent. You should always have a mechanic or someone mechanically knowledgeable look over a potential purchase.

Re: SIMI. Forget them, they are a lobby group and mouthpiece for the motor trade here where their membership is made up of the dealers they represent so they don't offer you the consumer anything extra.

extra-ordinary_

Looked at a car today. Car seemed clean, so went home and did a check with mywheels. Where do these history check sites get their information - especially as regards mileage? The car I checked shows the following...

Odometer Readings
Mileage Date Recorded Source
88000 miles 11/2017 Private contributor
87900 miles 3/2017 Private contributor
20500 miles 3/2010 Trade contributor


Where do these figures come from and who are the 'Private contributors'?
Car has been off the road the last 6 months and owner says nothing was done with it in November that could have recorded the mileage other than putting it on donedeal?? So that's where they're pulling this info from??

mickdw

extra-ordinary_ wrote: »

Looked at a car today. Car seemed clean, so went home and did a check with mywheels. Where do these history check sites get their information - especially as regards mileage? The car I checked shows the following...

Odometer Readings
Mileage Date Recorded Source
88000 miles 11/2017 Private contributor
87900 miles 3/2017 Private contributor
20500 miles 3/2010 Trade contributor


Where do these figures come from and who are the 'Private contributors'?
Car has been off the road the last 6 months and owner says nothing was done with it in November that could have recorded the mileage other than putting it on donedeal?? So that's where they're pulling this info from??

Sometimes people entering mileage when doing a history check will create a mileage record.
As for not buying a clocked car, Don't go looking for cheapest example of any model. They are usually cheap for a reason. Look for history with full receipts. Stamps mean nothing really. Cross check with garage to verify. Nct records are good now but only for last few years.
Check to see if claimed service work matches what would be required at mileages shown.
Don't buy on Northern or UK plate off DoneDeal from a fella named 'seller' at a service station with no info on him or the cars history.

extra-ordinary_

mickdw wrote: »

Sometimes people entering mileage when doing a history check will create a mileage record.
As for not buying a clocked car, Don't go looking for cheapest example of any model. They are usually cheap for a reason. Look for history with full receipts. Stamps mean nothing really. Cross check with garage to verify. Nct records are good now but only for last few years.
Check to see if claimed service work matches what would be required at mileages shown.
Don't buy on Northern or UK plate off DoneDeal from a fella named 'seller' at a service station with no info on him or the cars history.

Yes, you just reminded me of a time I did a HPI check on a UK car and put in something random for the mileage. The figure was then recorded and subsequent checks brought up a mileage discrepancy based on the figure I'd submitted.
As regards one of your other points, the car I was looking at seems the cheapest one of them available on DD with possibly the lowest mileage also. When we looked at it, the car came across very clean though and drove faultlessly. There was some collapsing of the bolstering on the drivers seat but this seemed like the only wear I could spot on the whole car. Could a seat get this worn in 80k miles?
He has a book stamped up to July this year. I'm gonna try and bring it to a mechanic to stick it up on a lift and have a good look at it tomorrow anyway.

Del2005

extra-ordinary_ wrote: »

Yes, you just reminded me of a time I did a HPI check on a UK car and put in something random for the mileage. The figure was then recorded and subsequent checks brought up a mileage discrepancy based on the figure I'd submitted.
As regards one of your other points, the car I was looking at seems the cheapest one of them available on DD with possibly the lowest mileage also. When we looked at it, the car came across very clean though and drove faultlessly. There was some collapsing of the bolstering on the drivers seat but this seemed like the only wear I could spot on the whole car. Could a seat get this worn in 80k miles?
He has a book stamped up to July this year. I'm gonna try and bring it to a mechanic to stick it up on a lift and have a good look at it tomorrow anyway.

Depends on how big the driver is and how often they got in an out.

mickdw

To be honest, i bought my audi new and the drivers seat deteriorated heavily inside 18 months to the point that Audi renewed the internal foam. I was about 17 stone though.
At 130k miles on same car now approaching 10 years, the seat surface is worn on the bolster too so at 80k, I wouldnt be surprised but I certainly wouldnt judge mileage by seat wear as a car used on motorway daily might have zero wear at 100k miles