Foreign Used & Mileage Rollback

[nirtime]

One of the biggest gripes I have with all foreign used cars that are bought through a dealer locally is the fact that you may never know the true mileage. Since when did a car with "23,000kms" on the clock consume oil or have totally brown coolant? I get it, the coolant could rust after the 5 year "Long life" but surely the engine must not be that worn to consume oil?

Also is the fact that a lot of foreign used cars come with cosmetic wear marks on the most used interior parts like seats, steering wheel, shift knob, etc... Do all of these cars with "30,000kms" have this type of wear?

Having been around, inspected and worked on several foreign used cars its easy to be fooled by cosmetic appearance. The true mileage is easily revealed from the time an intake ducting is removed and you look at the solenoid on the throttlebody or realise the PCV is stuffed. It's even sort of obvious by pulling the EGR or the condition of the coolant, whether it is the original assuming car is less than 5-6 years of age or whether it has been replaced. I'll even go as far as to say that the condition of the engine bay can tell the story as well. ALL of the foreign used I've worked on have had absolutely filthy engine bays that seem like grease was just layered and packed up in every crevice. Doesn't seem like 35,000kms to me.

I daily drive a vehicle with 100,000 all original kms on the clock and I can tell you it is easy to get fooled by "foreign used with low mileage". Once properly detailed and looked after, even high mileage cars can look like 50,000kms or in the odd case 25-30,000kms. It's truly the finest of detail that tell the whole story from the amount of rock chips to the condition of the paint.

What are your thoughts? Have a foreign used?

 

[grimreaper009]

on the real most people down here dont care once their vehicle works in a time frame lol and for some people foreign used is the best they can do and so they spend money by reputable companies to get a check on the car they are buying....in this day and age if a person buys bad its there fault with all this available to them

 

[nirtime]

Honestly I won't say its all their fault one time. When you go on the lot you don't have the chance to interfere with the intake ducting even so when they wash and detail the cars most of them look the part unless you look at finer details like the brake pedals or the seats.

I have to say that a lot of people just don't know. If they knew about the real mileage there would be fewer people purchasing these cars.

By chance do the cars get very banged up in transit to the point some of the bodies can twist out of shape?

 

[grimreaper009]

depending on who the are packed i can see a little bit of dings could take place but body out of shape nah i doubt car had to be so b4 it was placed in a container

 

[nirtime]

Same thing I was thinking as well. Some of them come off the container with some very interesting twists and shapes of all sizes. LOL.

 

[grimreaper009]

im not saying no it cant happen in the container eh but the chances will be low in my book

 

[Saxman642]

There was a local company that you could have used to get the true mileage of your foreign used car. Seems they have contacts on Japan Licensing. If I find them I'll post the link

 

[nirtime]

There was a local company that you could have used to get the true mileage of your foreign used car. Seems they have contacts on Japan Licensing. If I find them I'll post the link

Wow please do, that'll be a great help to many owners.

 

[nirtime]

im not saying no it cant happen in the container eh but the chances will be low in my book

Well yeah its kind of understood with the statement too lol.

 

[The Dude]

The rolled back mileage thing always irked me. I went by a dealer that used to do history reports on his vehicles and thing so even if he selling you a car with 36,000km on it he will tell you that it really have 95,000km on it or whatever and would change all the belts and hoses to make sure. I bought a foreign in January this year from him with 44,000km as per the history check. He changed fluids so I couldn't check that but the interior showed some wear and tear from someone with a ring opening and closing the door by the handle.

The thing I normally check is the brakes. The discs were hardly worn and the handbrakes were stiff and low as it should be (2-3 clicks and it locked, 4-5 if I on a really steep hill). I also checked underneath by the spare tire which still looked like new. The engine bay looked fine, just really dusty, but there were no markings of any spilled oils or tool marks on the engine anywhere so I think it's good.

The only problem to date is that I sometimes get a jerk when going from 1st to 2nd gear but everything else works perfectly. So far I've made about 10,000km. I did a full service at 5,000 though because I wanted to make sure everything was good.

But I actually overpaid for my car and stayed on the dealer like white on rice to make sure I got what I wanted. If this car works good I'm going back to him to get my next scooby

 

[nirtime]

You seem to have gotten a fairly decent car. If the dust in the engine bay wasn't bad to the point it made the original paint look almost black then that's not bad at all.

Also that jerk may be the transmission mount or potentially the fluid. My dad once had a Cefiro that used to shift so rough from 1st to 2nd it used to rattle something inside the dash. Changed all the mounts and there were no jerks after despite that being a common problem on A33s.

 

[BrotherHood]

I am a firm believer that all foreign used vehicles have the mileage rolled back on them before they come here. I prefer to buy local used (2nd owner from show room). For the condition and problems these cars face, they mileage of the vehicle does not correspond. Brake shoes, which some people never change, need to be changed six months after purchase. This is just one personal experience. My local used B14 hitting 230,000kms and I change brake shoes at 205,000kms.

However, to each their own and the foreign used in alot of cases offer more features as opposed to the local showrom vehicles. Most recent and relevant example is the Honda Civic FD (roro) being sold now vs the Honda Civic FA being sold locally from Classic Motors. The foreign used FD comes with an 1800cc Vtec engine that costs around $115,000 on the road, while the local FA comes with a 1600cc engine as base model. If you want an 1800cc vtec locally, you looking at more than $200,000.

 

[grimreaper009]

brake shoes is not something which need changing often lol those ppl who changing in 6months for a 23000km car is like lol sumn definitely wrong....but a man can't tell you know to plug in your scan tool and check for yourself if he trying to sell a used car...I think dealers need to be more transparent or a man go and import he car himself

 

[nirtime]

Yeah Grim that's true, more people considering their own imports due to this problem. Also some of the used cars are questionable. Family member happened to find roofing screws in place of camber bolts on a FU. Have no idea if it was done overseas or locally. The tire just would cut on the inside until the bolts were sourced and installed. A lot of the dealers also do really poor repairs. The paint over panels and dent repairs are normally really bad. I don't mean my kind of fussy close to perfect but not perfect bad, but actually so bad you can see sanding scratches under the paint and the clear coat often doesn't shine like it should.

Brotherhood made a solid point there but given the relative uncertainty its easy to buy an oil burner 1.8 that was well used and not realise it until you already do some maintenance work. The foreign used cars have way better feature packages than our locals and if someone really wants a good used car, its best to do it themselves and go through a reputable Japanese company and import it themselves.

 

[nirtime]

Re: Foreign Used & Mileage Rollback

Well that's the thing i wasn't aware of. I could basically get to see how these things are working and generally on all these levels that's how stuff is being managed which is the way how it is all going ahead.

Mad racer, as a mechanic you would probably see how "45,000kms" and the engine black like 200,000 all over.