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Advice re: Putting a car on the road with a replaced odometer

889 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  cmj912, 
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I bought a 190D. The seller fixed the instrument cluster for me and replaced it with a used one because the car wouldn't pass inspection to be registered here without it. The new cluster is nice and functional. But of course it is not set at 0, he just popped it in there and plugged it in.

He wrote and we both signed a letter stating that he did so.

Is there anything I need or need to prepare, do you think, to get the car on the road? I know that my state requires a VIN check, title, etc. for an out of state sale, and pretty much all of my documents will be in order EXCEPT for the fact we did not reset any mileage.

I may be ok, because most of the laws in my state don't apply to cars over 25 years old (this one turns 25 this year :)) but I just wondered if any of you, who seem to have experience with cars that have needed odometer repair in the older cars, have any advice for what I might do. I can't just stop by the sellers house as it is 2900 miles away.
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I think partly because we don't really know when it stopped. It had something like 200k on it or something when someone apparently pressed the trip reset when the car was moving. But the seller wasn't exactly sure. I told him that I couldn't register the car here with the odometer not functioning and he offered to get ahold of a working one and install it. At this point the really 'bad' things (cars need to pass safety inspections here even if they are emissions exempt) were that and a cracked driver's side headlight glass. I got ahold of a new used one and I *think* I can do that, I just wasn't sure what to do with the odometer.

Wish the car well on its 3000 mile journey across the United States. It apparently went on the truck to be shipped to me this afternoon.
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Definitely will note it for posterity. I don't think the DMV cares, though, that what I want is to *drive* the car as a source of pleasure for *me*...LOL. They think that because the car is coming here as a recent sale from out of state that my devious aims are to rollback the odometer and resell it.

My hope is that because of the age of the car they won't bother with any of that. There is something called a 'visual VIN inspection' that a car must pass if it is coming from out of state where they look at all the VIN plates and then run it through the stolen database and look at the title if there is one. This is before you can even get license plates.

However, I often ask myself: how are you supposed to get the car to the VIN inspection station if you don't have license plates and you bought the car used from a private seller? Nonsense.

Anyway, thank you all. I'm just going to hope for the best.
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