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Would you buy this car?
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- 2 Lemon pips
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Would you buy this car?
A relative of mine is thinking of buying a second hand car (Nissan Juke as it happens). It's a June 2013 first reg, 2 previous owners and 10,800 miles on the clock. Seems incredibly low, but I guess it can happen. Anyway she asked my advice and I looked up the MOT history on the gov website. Here are the recorded details:
Date tested Mileage
1 June 2021 10,473 miles
3 June 2020 9,636 miles
13 June 2019 8,994 miles
12 June 2018 8,325 miles
22 June 2017 14,274 miles
28 June 2016 5,531 miles
Anybody any ideas as to what might have happened here?
TIA
Maylix
Date tested Mileage
1 June 2021 10,473 miles
3 June 2020 9,636 miles
13 June 2019 8,994 miles
12 June 2018 8,325 miles
22 June 2017 14,274 miles
28 June 2016 5,531 miles
Anybody any ideas as to what might have happened here?
TIA
Maylix
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
This sounds really odd
If someone is going to "clock" the mileage it is normally beacuse it is very high eg 100,000 plus
This site gives some reasons, but most of them are rare in terms of likelihood
https://www.odosolutions.biz/pages/reas ... correction
If someone is going to "clock" the mileage it is normally beacuse it is very high eg 100,000 plus
This site gives some reasons, but most of them are rare in terms of likelihood
https://www.odosolutions.biz/pages/reas ... correction
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
Well my first thought is the 22 June 2017 entry the tester just got the mileage wrong.
Less likely would be the owner at the time knew they were doing a lot of miles and bought a new speedo for it, re-starting at zero.
Is it a mechanical odometer or an electronic display? On reflection my older vehicle is electronic and I'd have thought the manus would have made fiddling them near impossible nowadays. But an acquaintance of mine who used to run a Jaguar garage says otherwise. Not sure I believe him.
That wasn't much help, was it?!
(Spilling edit.)
Less likely would be the owner at the time knew they were doing a lot of miles and bought a new speedo for it, re-starting at zero.
Is it a mechanical odometer or an electronic display? On reflection my older vehicle is electronic and I'd have thought the manus would have made fiddling them near impossible nowadays. But an acquaintance of mine who used to run a Jaguar garage says otherwise. Not sure I believe him.
That wasn't much help, was it?!
(Spilling edit.)
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- Lemon Quarter
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Re: Would you buy this car?
Guy in the garage was doing more than one MOT at a time, and got two cars mixed up.
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
Maylix wrote:A relative of mine is thinking of buying a second hand car (Nissan Juke as it happens). It's a June 2013 first reg, 2 previous owners and 10,800 miles on the clock. Seems incredibly low, but I guess it can happen. Anyway she asked my advice and I looked up the MOT history on the gov website. Here are the recorded details:
Date tested Mileage
1 June 2021 10,473 miles
3 June 2020 9,636 miles
13 June 2019 8,994 miles
12 June 2018 8,325 miles
22 June 2017 14,274 miles
28 June 2016 5,531 miles
Anybody any ideas as to what might have happened here?
TIA
Maylix
It's been clocked between 2016 & 2017 and been clocked on continuous years too. A car that's doing 10-20 miles a week? Is the owner a millionaire who uses it once a week to visit his mistress
If you can't explain it I'd walk around it and tell your friend to look elsewhere
It's not a mistake in my opinion. Look at the interior foot pedals, steering wheel and gear knob for signs of wear that would exceed this sort of use. I suspect the engine compartment should look amazingly pristine too. It's also very possible it should have no wear to the tyres. Even though the tyres shouldn't have worn down with 10K mileage they should still have needed changing due to side wall degradation caused by solar gain (not sure if that applies to a vehicle that has been in a dark garage when not used.)
AiY
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
Looks like a mistake to me.
What engine is it. If diesel then I wouldn't like the low miles...DPF problems?
John
What engine is it. If diesel then I wouldn't like the low miles...DPF problems?
John
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
I also reckon it's a mistake. Probably the testing station got two cars mixed up when it came to sorting out the paperwork. A bit weird that nobody has queried it.
My parents' 200 series Rover had barely 14,000 miles on it at nine years, when I sold it on their behalf. My mother was disabled, and my father did footlingly small mileages until we took the car keys away from him for everybody's safety. That happens. By that stage, the tyres were still okay, but one of the water hoses had sprung a leak.
Agree that the sharpest test of a car's true mileage is to examine the steering wheel and pedals for "inconsistent" wear. Are all the tyres the same? Would be a good sign.
I'd only add that my own negative experience with a tidy low-miler (15K @ seven years) could have been avoided if only I'd had the car comprehensively flushed out. (Oil, brakes, gearbox, but most of all the coolant). I'd been driving the car for six months when a lump of encrusted sediment suddenly came loose from the bottom of somewhere and blocked the water pump, with catastrophic consequences when it seized on the M4. It cost me a top end rebuild, head skim and new valves and all, but it was never the same again. Learn from my example.
BJ
My parents' 200 series Rover had barely 14,000 miles on it at nine years, when I sold it on their behalf. My mother was disabled, and my father did footlingly small mileages until we took the car keys away from him for everybody's safety. That happens. By that stage, the tyres were still okay, but one of the water hoses had sprung a leak.
Agree that the sharpest test of a car's true mileage is to examine the steering wheel and pedals for "inconsistent" wear. Are all the tyres the same? Would be a good sign.
I'd only add that my own negative experience with a tidy low-miler (15K @ seven years) could have been avoided if only I'd had the car comprehensively flushed out. (Oil, brakes, gearbox, but most of all the coolant). I'd been driving the car for six months when a lump of encrusted sediment suddenly came loose from the bottom of somewhere and blocked the water pump, with catastrophic consequences when it seized on the M4. It cost me a top end rebuild, head skim and new valves and all, but it was never the same again. Learn from my example.
BJ
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
shows how much the testers bother to reflect on the recorded mileage ...
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- Lemon Half
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Re: Would you buy this car?
I did have one MOT where the tester recorded the mileage incorrectly (too high). The recorded mileage subsequently went down at the next MOT. Only happened the once.
edit: my car only did <500 miles since the last MOT ....10 miles per week on avg. I can assure all here that I have NOT clocked the car..most definitely NOT!
edit: my car only did <500 miles since the last MOT ....10 miles per week on avg. I can assure all here that I have NOT clocked the car..most definitely NOT!
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Re: Would you buy this car?
Thanks everyone, so the consensus seems to be that it was a mistake and therefore nothing to worry about...and thanks to bungeejumper for the tip on flushing out; will pass that on to the prospective buyer.
Regards
Maylix
Regards
Maylix
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- Lemon Slice
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Re: Would you buy this car?
I'd be super skeptical about 10k on an 8 year old car. It doesn't make it a no go, but you'd have to have a good idea why the mileage is so low (is it possible to contact the previous owner directly), even before the MOT discrepancy. I recently bought a 2010 Pug 207 with 22k on the clock. With sceptics hat on I looked at the interior (seat thigh supports, shoulder supports, sag. Shiney steering wheel, lettering/symbols on the stalks/gear stick) as well as the foot rubbers which are often replaced to cheaply disguise the miles. Then the service book and phoned the dealer to corroborate the service stamps. Then looked for the downsides of under use, corrosion, blocked drains etc. As it happens on the Pug it was all good and I bought it. ( I kicked myself that I failed to notice that the camchain replacement was missed on the service schedule at 10 years). The biggest give away though, was that the car felt virtually new when you got into it, everything just looked new and unworn. You can't fool the eye on this even with a very well prepared used car with 100k on it. All IMHO of course.
BTW I have an old motorcycle which has a faulty odometer, the MOT mileage has gone down for the last 2 years!
BTW I have an old motorcycle which has a faulty odometer, the MOT mileage has gone down for the last 2 years!
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- Lemon Quarter
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Re: Would you buy this car?
My wifes car is low mileage, not as low as that but still low. It was originally bought by an old lady who used it to do 3 to 4,000 miles in it's first few years and then the use tailed off to a few hundred miles each year as she became less mobile. We bought it off the garage that had supplied the car as new and serviced it and MOT'd it. The services dropped to every 2 years in the later stages as the garage said it wasn't worth doing each year for a few hundred miles.
I checked the car over for signs of wear in the usual places, it all fitted the story so my wife bought it.
In the OP's case I'd be inclined to accept the situation and buy the car if everything else seems ok. I doubt someone clocking a car would reduce mileage to such a low level that it would raise questions.
I checked the car over for signs of wear in the usual places, it all fitted the story so my wife bought it.
In the OP's case I'd be inclined to accept the situation and buy the car if everything else seems ok. I doubt someone clocking a car would reduce mileage to such a low level that it would raise questions.
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