How To Read Mileage On A Fox

FoxMustangLvr

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Oct 14, 2012
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All my years driving Fords that do not have that 6th digit it's been difficult to know how many miles a car really has once it's turned over 100k. However it's been easy to know when it has under 100k on it, the 1 will line up with all the other numbers.

All the time I see people leaving a digit off when it seems clear the mileage is much more than they advertise. For instance I see a clean LX vert for sale but the picture of the odometer looks off to me. Either they don't know or they are scammers. What do you think this odometer really reads? The owner is saying this car has 19,262 miles on it. I call B.S.! They're asking nearly $14k for this car.

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Not 19k.



This one is on CL listed as 160k miles. Told the owner I think it's really 106k but they insist this reads 160K
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All my years driving Fords that do not have that 6th digit it's been difficult to know how many miles a car really has once it's turned over 100k. However it's been easy to know when it has under 100k on it, the 1 will line up with all the other numbers.

All the time I see people leaving a digit off when it seems clear the mileage is much more than they advertise. For instance I see a clean LX vert for sale but the picture of the odometer looks off to me. Either they don't know or they are scammers. What do you think this odometer really reads? The owner is saying this car has 19,262 miles on it. I call B.S.! They're asking nearly $14k for this car.

00L0L_g7dsKKSsXBN_600x450.jpg
Definitely looks like at least 100k. I always figured you can look at the entire car and get a good representation of what the mileage/use&abuse the car has seen. Odometer only means so much to me. Mine only has 16k original miles. Really. Really it does;)
 
If it has a Fl title, get the seller to show you the title. There is a box for miles at time of last sale. If it is the original owner it will say original/new. Cars over 10 years old it can say exempt, you can specify a verified mileage and they can verify it by an agency employee or certified inspector. It also shows date of last sale on the registration. Beware of 'open' titles, it is usually a flipper.
There is a free vin check you can use through the fdmv, it will not provide owner info (glb privacy act) but it does show date of last sale, lienholder if any, miles, original owner or miles exempt.
 
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The mileage on those things is very easy to alter. I won't say how, but it took me all of 10 mins to do once the cluster was out.

In my case, I was matching mileage when I installed a 140moh speedo, but I'm sure it can be done for nefarious reasons as well.

My peeve is not listing chassis mileage. I've seen this with some $10-15k cars where mileage since resto is given. One went as far as to say the chassis mileage didn't matter as everything is new. Problem with that is the chassis itself is not new, and I certainly wouldn't want a body with 200K miles worth of flexing on it.


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I dont care what the odometer says, I look at the title and carfax,.Also look at the pedals. A car with 132k mikes will have worn pedals.. Most guys overlook that when the try and scam you..
 
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Also look for steering wheel wear and grime on the hand controls. They always get grimey at higher miles unless cleaned very well.

With that said...It looks to be a fairly original interior and rather clean. Gotta look for obvious clues like scuffing on kick panels and pedal wear and other things that cars with 19K miles just don't grt


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Interesting. I'm wondering if my stang has 60,000 or 160,000 miles. My pedals show no wear. Just some normal stains from dirty shoes.
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The stock torque boxes look great and it still had the stock 2.73 gears along with the aod, so the engine hardly ever saw rpms higher than 2000. This car confuses me. There are signs of high mileage and signs of low mileage. When I took off the valve-covers, there was a lot of hard dried oil glaze (dark brown grime) covering the underside of the valvecovers and inside the oil breather/filler neck and a little grime on the valvesprings. No sludge or carbon though. The inside of the throttlebody and intake manifold was soaked in oil also, due to a clogged PCV filter. The driver side seat also had a busted bolt which caused the seat to lean back all the way down to the back seat. Odometer shows 60,422 miles now, so I put 422 miles in it since I bought it back in july of 2015. lol
 
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The oil glaze and other oil globing, clogging and general stickyness in my opinion is from running the engine for short periods and low rpm schlepping around town, not bring the oil up to temperature and dissipating the moisture from the inside of the motor. I suspect the gear oil in the rear is suspect too. Another reason could be the previous owner used a 'jiffy lube' type establishment to service the vehicle and they used inferior oil products. Cheep oil is just that, cheep, may actually be low milage just poor choice of maintenance products.
Or could be that the pcv system malfunctioned at some point and they didn't notice.
 
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I dont care what the odometer says, I look at the title and carfax,.Also look at the pedals. A car with 132k mikes will have worn pedals.. Most guys overlook that when the try and scam you..
This. If I suspect high mileage, it's the first thing I look at. A few other things, as well. Dad ran a small used car lot when I was growing up. He wasn't crooked, but people would try to pull one on you daily.

Another place to look for is the door pins/bushings (mainly drivers side). They wear with use, not so much with age.

Now having said that, I just replaced pedal pads and door pins/bushings on my 98gt. But that one has an extra digit on the odometer.