Clocking (don't worry, it's legal)

i know ;o) but its a no no, why do you want to alter the mileage ? gonner look a bit suss when//if you come to sell it.

Er, because the 120mph clocks I bought have a different mileage to my car. Anyway, I worked it out. Unscrewing the dial face gives enough room to stick in a tiny screwdriver in the teeth beside each digit. Mission accomplished. :)

How many extras did you knock off ;) ?

If it'd been me. I'd have been faithful to the current mileage. My trip meter is broken so I'm half considering salvaging a dash unit from a scrappie. Once you've got the car to a certain age, the miles it has done are pretty irrelevant except as a badge of honour in having kept it going for n00000 miles. Low miles for a 1989 Golf would be 150,000. I don't think it is really that relevant unless he knocks off 100,000 miles and there's the minor issue of the MOT recorded miles and the tax ones too. He hasn't been clocking it every year for the last 15 or so so he can't take it down too much.

If I do get a replacement dash I'll be setting it to the same miles as I'm at now (nearly 159,000). There really isn't any point in knocking miles off an old car.

Warwick

I must admit to knocking off 30-odd miles. Mainly because I couldn't be bothered to alter more than the first few digits. We're now on 131446, for the record. :)

IIRC clocking isn't illegal anyway, provided you tell any potential buyer. I see quite a few s/h cars for sale, especially classics, where the speedo has been changed and the vendor doesn't know the real mileage. Classics tend to be bought on condition and a strict inspection rather than mileage, so it's not important.

Shouldn't a MK II GTI have a 140mph Speedo?

I can't remember now, so I might be wrong, but I'm sure mine was 140.

Richard

My Merc's on 172k, my Omega had 225k!

My understanding is that they moved from 120 to 140 at around the big-bumper changeover time, although it is hard to be sure. That's why the 140s are so rare, and go for large amounts on ebay. What year was yours?

'90 Big Bumper with Digifant (H774 HVN, IIRC). I thought the 140 came with Digifant, which again IIRC showed up in '88.

Richard

Hmm, mine's an '89 small bumper with Digifant. The only way to settle this is to go to the dealer with my VIN. There is so much conflicting information out there.

I thought the Digifant models could do 121mph - usually my mantra for the Mk II 8v is 0-60 in 8.5 seconds, 125mph, and 45mpg - hence not having 120mph speedo (I was pretty sure all the Mk IIs were quicker than the 115mph Mk 1, too...). Presumably if there is a GTI compatible MFA dash for a Mk II that displays 120, then I'm wrong somewhere.

Richard

And? It's a 17 year old motor.

And it'll look like they've been clocked and any buyer who has half a clue will be very suspicious.

But can you prove it?

What the hell was the point in bothering?

Precisely. Altering the odometer comes under the pretty pointless heading.

I wanted to. I didn't want the car showing 180K when it has allegedly done 130K.

And I wanted them to represent the true mileage of the car. (In as much as I know it. ;)

It looks fine actually. Buyers will have the MOT to ease their minds. Besides which, we all agree on the fact that mileage is taken with a pinch of salt / irrelevant on a 1989 Golf. But it would have annoyed me to have an extra 50K on there.

Well, these things take time :)

I'll aim for 200 and then see how we go.

Warwick

In news:MPG.1edc40dc53c4c51e9896d9@dalai, Warwick waffled on in a semi-interesting fashion, it went something like this;

My old Golf GTi had 379000 as it's indicated mileage, but it was in KM.

The Range Rover is on 175000 miles.