what obd reader can i purchase to read actual mileage,on a chevy van as opposed to what the odometer reads , i plan to travel across the states to live closer to my son.?
Why are you asking ? Is your odometer broken ?
i almost got burned on buying a used cargo van, i need to buy one but want to not buy a rolled back odometer/ van.
Any vehicle over 10 years old is mileage exempt . So just evaluate anything that old on it’s current condition. Most dealers will say actual mileage unknown . Besides even if it wrong you can’t prove who changed it.
?? it don’t make it right, people who have money to invest in a vehicle expect a fair deal.
Once a vehicle is that old, the mileage doesn’t really matter.
Here’s my question - is there some ‘true’ miles number stored somewhere that might differ from what the odometer shows? I’ve never heard of that.
The mileage is stored in the gauge cluster. If you swap gauge clusters, the mileage will show the doner vehicle mileage. There is a program that runs on a regular computer (windows based) that the gauge cluster can be removed from the dash and plugged into to change the mileage to the correct mileage for the current vehicle. I don’t know if there is any way to tell if it has been changed.
Thanks, @keith - can that stored number be different than the displayed number?
As far as I know, it is just an electronic register. It only stores the current value which is displayed. I don’t know if you can pull a history file and see if was changed at anytime.
OK, so it sounds like there’s not much reason to get an OBD reader in this case, since the stored and displayed numbers will be the same.