Conference terri::cars_uk

I always think of "average" mileage as 10000 per year.  Company (and lease) cars
will invariably do more than this, so 40000 (say) on a 3 year old lease car
could be considered "low" mileage for the type of car.

There are plenty of genuine low mileage cars around.  My mum does 6000 a year,
and there are plenty of other people who don't drive the length of the country
every week.

So you can't put a typical mileage figure on any age of car.  The best way to
check if the mileage is genuine is look at the mileages recorded on the service
history.

Scott

    I know somebody who recently bought an A-reg 1.3 Orion with about
    50,000 miles on the clock. The engine is really rattly. Pressing the
    accelerator at low revs in top gear produces a noise like the
    injector pumps on a diesel! What is this noise, is it severe engine
    wear?  We are of the opion that this car has indeed been clocked.
    
    Chris 

    
    sound's as if their big-ends are Kn*****d....
    
    it may not necessarily have been "clocked" just driven badly for too
    long...too high a gear for the roadspeed etc...

    I do  about 40,000 miles a year in my leasemobile; my wife does about
    3,000 miles a year in her car...
    
    Just goes to prove nothing, doesn't it?
    
    I agree with a couple back; I reckon the average is about 10,000 miles
    ayear to.
    
    Peter.
    

.3>>	sound's as if their big-ends are Kn*****d....
    

Doubt it!  If you've ever run a car with the big ends gone you'll know that
it'll only ruin for a few miles at best until it sounds like a steam hammer
trying to beat it's way out of the crankcase!  More likely a case of severe
pinking (at best) or the little ends/piston slap.

Whatever it is - GET IT SEEN TO FAST as any unusual noise is suspect!

    An unscrupulous collegue of mine was about to clock a very nice
    but high milage Escort he owned before selling it.

    On removing the speedo, a piece of paper fell on the floor.

    The paper read "Oh no, not again !!!"

    He clocked it, added "Yes, again" to the piece of paper and
    then put it up for sale.

    Not sure what became of him, or the car afterwards ...

  Mark

    Dont rely on a service history with dates and mileages as a guarantee -
    they are easily altered...
    
    The idea of DVLC recording mileage at every change of owner sounded
    good to me.
    
    
    John

    Mileage really is only a weak indicator of the condition of a car's
    engine......
    
    I had a spell doing 55,000 miles/annum and reckon that the engine
    was in far better shape after that than a low mileage car. Rationale
    is that my car was in the garage every 4 weeks for a service (without
    fail) and the garage got used to looking out for things that might
    go wrong. The engine spent 99% of it's life at optimum working
    temperature and conditions
    
    My wife's car does less than 3,000 miles/annum and spends most of
    its time running over-rich cos the temperature is too low. What's
    caning it is the fact that it's all stop-start motoring in town.
    In 13 years its only clocked up 45,000 miles.......
    
    My next door neighbour has a Marina with a L as the letter after
    the digits on the reg plate and that's only done 13,000 miles. 

    
    Part of the problem lies with the people _buying_ the cars, anyone
    buying on the second hand market, who doesn't know anything about what
    they are looking at, should at least get a third party opinion, AA, or
    RAC, maybe. If the seller is not prepared for the car to be examined,
    then keep away! As the last note pointed out, milage is not necessarily
    the best guide to the likely state of the vehicle anyway. Potential 
    purchasers should be using their eyes and ears, not just trying to get a 
    'good deal'. I'm not defending the people doing the clocking, I just
    think purchasers should look at the car, not justthe paperwork.

    re .3
    Sound like a typical Ford cvh engine. Get your tappets looked at.
    
    IAn.

    quickly disappearing down the rathole...
    
>        re .3
>    Sound like a typical Ford cvh engine. Get your tappets looked at.
>    
>    IAn.

    
    Does this man know anything about ch tappets ? Mr Bisop of FYO would
    be very interested. His XR2 sounds like a box of nuts at the moment
    and on consulting the Haynes we found that CVH engines have hydraulic
    tappets, therefore are self adjusting.
    
    Is Haynes lying ? Is there a way of adjusting ?
    
    Mr Grimsdale tell all
    
    AMS

    Some CVH engines have hydraulic tappets. From memory the original 
    XR3 engine used in the XR2, does not have them.

    Re. CVH engine in Fiesta. I'm sure the one we're interested in is
    a hydraulic tappet type. It's a Mk II XR2, and the drawing in the
    Haynes is too similar to the one under the bonnet for much doubt
    to creep in. True - I havn't checked the engine number though.
    
    Any-road-up - same question, if it is hydraulic, can you adjust
    it ?
    
    
    AMS

From my (limited) knowledge of hydraulic tappets, any noise is due to valve
guide wear and *NOT* bad adjustment ('cos there is no adjustment!).  The cheap
cure for this is ignore it.  The expensive cure is major cylinder head surgery
followed by wallet contents removal.

Scott

    Oi, do you mind!
    
    You're talking about a very serious thing here, delving into the
    wallet is dangerous to my health!
    
    Seriously, the cam belt snapped a while back, and i had to have
    the valves replaced. Then this noise appeared.
    
    I will be listening and replying with interest.
    
    Lewis.

     The only time the tappets were noisy with my Escort was when the
     oil was running low. I get the impression the hydraulic tappets
     rely on there being oil in the engine ...

     This was an Escort 1.6 ..."Y" reg, don't know the year.

     The main problem with hydraulic tappets is that they are not a direct
     connection. The main advantage is that they are self adjusting and quiet.
     
     In a so called performance engine, which the XR3 engine was supposed to
     be for its day (pre XR3i), I thought that they had opted for the non
     hydraulic tappeted version of the engine.

     Does the XR2 use the pre-injection version of the XR3 engine ???

 Mark

    Hydraulic tappets can be adjusted but it needs a special tool so you`ll
    have to get your Fordie dealer to do it. Unless you know someone with
    the special tool.
    
    
    Ian.

    About half a year ago I traded in my wife's Merc for an Audi Avant.
    This car has transported my wife for 28K problem-free miles. 
    As we have since moved closer to my wife's work and I have a company car 
    for daily transport we traded in the Audi for a sporty two-seater.
    We realy liked the Audi and were impressed by the quality of both the
    design and the assembly. Now we are even more impressed:
    
    It seems that the Audi had at more than one time in it's short history 
    been set back in milage on the clock before we bought it. In total it
    must have covered well over 200K miles within four years.
    Yesterday the car-trader officially claimed us to be responsible for
    the milage deficite when trading it in and billed us for his damage.
    Obviously this is no problem and will be dealt with but it does make
    you wonder.....
    
    Clocking cars obviously is big business and both legislation and
    industry do nothing to protect us from this fraudulent situation.
    A tamper-free odometer "system" is so easy to implement so why isn't 
    it?
    We will certainly never ever buy another car without having the milage
    warranted in writing!
    
    Peter                                           

    
    Top Gear last week covered this very issue.Quinten Wilson stated that a 
    tamper-proof odometer could be eaily implemented by car manufacturers,and 
    when approached most would be willing to do so if the law required so.
    One of the only cars availble with tamper-proof odo's is the Jaguar XJ12 
    and I think XJ6.When interviewing a "clocker"it was revealed that anyone 
    could do it,this "clocker" would go to an auction by a 80k mile car,clock 
    it and sell it on 2 days later for about 1500 pounds more.
    	Quintens points to look out for:
    
    	Fraid screws on the dashboard.
    	Lined up digits.
    	
    	Andy.

    The only Europeans with electronic odometers offer some security since
    the PROMS that keep the score are not that easy to program. Certainly
    not by the average home-clocker! This includes most BMW models etc.,
    all models with electronic odometers and this therefore by no means is 
    a Jag exclusive. What Jag does have exclusive is that the PROM will 
    reset to "blank" if anybody tries to re-program it.
    
    Some US cars have a mechanical security: to turn back the drums it is
    neccessary to slighlty pull them out of their intermeshing gears. With
    these specific US odometers the "device" keeps them separated, showing
    a white painted surface between the drums. So if on a US car there are
    white lines showing between the rotating drums -> clocking was here!
    
    Still the question is: if it available and easy to implement why
    doesn't the industry do it?
    In my opinion car dealer complaining have egg on their face! It's us,
    the customers, that pay the price.
    Also I consider this to be a major safety issue. Why nag about airbags
    when we are already strapped in, whereas at the same time nobody prevents 
    us from driving with cars that have done 100K miles more than we are 
    aware of. 
    
    Peter 

    >> nobody prevents us from driving with cars that have done 100K miles
    >> more than we are aware of.
    
    This point was also mentioned by Quentin Wilson. I don't quite see the
    problem though.
    
    Do you drive a car differently if it has covered 90,000 or 190,000 ?
    As long as it is MoT'd and regularly serviced (as high mileage company
    cars usually are) I can't see the problem.
    
    Whilst I totally agree that tamper proof odometers are the answer,
    unless a car has a well documented history the mileage shown should be
    taken with a pinch of salt. Its also not uncommon for cars to
    legitimately have new speedo's fitted as well which will of course have
    a new odo as well. 
    
    Interestingly I guy I know had a new speedo on a fairly new Montego 
    when it had done 12000 miles. He asked the garage if they could wind on
    the clock to show the correct mileage that the car had covered and
    their answer was "Oh no sir, we can't tamper with that!".
    
    Royston

    Here in the US it's a federally punishable crime to tamper with an
    odometer. I agree with -1(I think) that high mileage can be taken
    with a grain of salt so long as maintainence history is documented
    and you know what you're purchasing.
    Gary

    The new Golfs have electronic odometers too.
    
    D.

re .21

Of course the milage makes a difference. For one thing, you end up
paying throught the nose for a car that isn't worth that much.
And secondly, yes, you do drive a car differently. If the
clock says 190,000 miles, then you know there might not be 
so much life in the engine than a car with 90,000 on it.

If the car has a lower mileage, then you should expect the
cost of maintenance to be lower. 


	Ian

    I bought a two year old Peugeot 305GLD estate with 105,000 miles on the
    clock and a full service record. About 2,000 miles later the odometer
    started spinning round on the 1,000s, leaving the 100's to work
    correctly - we never found out why. The garage said the only thing to
    do was replace the whole speedo, so I did that, and they too refused to
    wind on the clock to the correct mileage. We were the losers on that
    though, because on importing the car into France we had to pay import
    duty on a car with only 5,000 miles on the clock...
    
    Piers