Does anyone know how I can get the correct odometer reading on this
> salvage body computer, without having to pay the $300?? I am planning
> on selling the car and want it to reflect the correct mileage. Thanks.
Your best shot is selling it as-is with the original BCM installed and giving the seller the new BCM and explaining the circumstances. You have to face facts that to most buyers the vehicle you have is at least $800 in the hole from it's blue book because the A/C is bad. If you get an interested seller who is hesitant on the A/C you can always offer to swap the module before they buy the vehicle - many sellers are going to have a mechanic check a vehicle like this out anyway, and if they take the wrecking yard BCM with them the mechanic can confirm your diagnosis pretty quickly. In this case there's a good chance that many sellers might be willing to pay you $300 below blue book anyhow, which puts you at a fair deal, just for a chance of getting a vehicle that they can turn back the odometer by nearly 30,000 miles.
In my state there is a provision on the title for stating the odometer's error. If you want a clear conscience, just check that block and your buyer will have to buy the vehicle with the incorrect mileage. The title will state the error but the odometer will not. I think Ted's solution could be trouble in states such as mine even though it isn't your fault.
Ric, I should have explained that if the seller is going to offer to swap the BCM before purchase to prove the AC works, once that is proven he needs to swap it back before letting go of the vehicle.
It greatly devalues the worth of a car with that low a mileage on it if you mark the title, as doing this removes legal obligation of the seller of guarenteeing that the mileage on the vehicle is correct. The value lost would be much more than the $300 that a correctly programmed BCM would cost.
When I buy a used car I always check for this on the title and if the title is so marked, I walk.
There is nothing illegal in selling the vehicle with the ORGINAL bcm that has the CORRECT mileage on it, as I recommended. If the buyer chooses to take the working BCM and install it later on themselves, that is their problem. It would be no different than if the buyer got the BCM from a wrecker themselves.
The one thing the seller DOESEN'T want to do is sell the car with the new, improper mileage BCM in it, without marking that title, otherwise he is breaking the law.
I agreed with your point except for the portion of allowing the car to go to the next owner, whom would be able to set back the odometer 30K miles. At some point, this car will have 30k miles digitally erased. Perhaps my one of my kids will be driving it someday thinking it is 2 years less worn than it really is. I think no one is the winner here except the auto maker again. They sold another faulty product.
There has got to be a way to isolate things such as odometer reading and a/c! Too bad we are in a world of modern technology.
Yes, that is a problem. But I think it's a moot issue since the poster has already spent his $100 and quite obviously isn't going to spend more money when he has a working BCM. This car is going to end up with
30K miles erased, no question about it, which is a shame. What remains now is who is going to do it, the seller or the buyer. Morally I argue that the seller should not do this, the buyer should be given the option.
Well a lot depends. If the buyer puts on another 80K miles then it's kind of a moot issue as by then the wear on the car will be so great that 30K miles + or - will not matter. You really only have a problem if the seller or buyer decides right now, immediately, to set back the odometer by
30K miles then immediately sell it, because the 30K setback now would make a considerable price difference.
I don't think though that this is really the fault of the automakers. It's really impossible today to make a car odometer tamper proof. Even in the days of the mechanical odometers with tamper-proofs on them, to set one back all you had to do is go to a wrecker and buy a different guage set from a wrecked car that was the same as yours.
I really feel this is the fault of the government, frankly. The problem is that the government decided a long time ago that instead of being honest with consumers and just telling people not to rely on odometer readings in used cars, that they were going to lie to the public and give out the assumption that odometer readings are canonical. As a result the entire used car industry today bases pricing on odometer readings. The government in fact collects sales tax that is higher the higher the price the used car sells for, so actually the government has a vested interest in helping used car dealers to inflate prices. They play this game by passing laws making it illegal for people to alter the odometer reading. But this is all show, because the government does not regulate sale of used car dash guages, or BCM's or anything like that. So the laws really don't prevent odometer tampering, they only serve as political window dressing.
The government should either dump all the odometer tampering laws (which will then let consumers know that odometer readings are worthless as a measure of how much wear is on a used car, which is the real truth) or they should treat odometers the same way they treat drugs - not only make the action itself illegal, but interdict the support for the action, by banning used BCM sales, used dash cluster sales, etc., much like the government is now regulating the sale of some of the key chemicals used to make crystal meth.
People put way too much stock in odometer readings on used cars.
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