I hope I can make sense of this.

If you have two mini's. The 1st mini has 50k miles on the digital guage read out. The 2nd mini has 100k miles on the guage. If you take out the guage from the 2nd mini w/100k miles on it and put it into the the 1st mini with 50k miles on it. What mileage read out on the guage in the 1st mini are you going to get? Will the digital gauge still say 100k miles on it even though the car has 50k actual miles on it. In other words does the guage only read what the computers car tells it or does the guage have it's own memory and will read whatever the donor car's miles had on it.

Asking because i'm looking at a 2005 mini with 44k miles on it. My buddy said he could have swapped out the guages from a donor car that had less mileage.

What does everyone think about it?

Please ask questions if I was not clear enough.
Thanks!

 

The miles are stored in 3 locations WITH THE VIN...and checks with the ecu, etc..
Move one part...you will get a mismatch both miles and Vin.
Moving parts are made very hard to prevent fraud......

 

also isnt it if those 3 locations are not some the same VIN, the car will not start?

 

P.S.
Moving gauges and creating a VIN# and mile mismatch will generally cause a large loss in value, and will get the car flagged in Carfax, etc for fraud...remember when the car us inspected, regerstered, or even has basic work done, the miles and the vin# is reported to a data base...if the numbers go backwards...you just lost a huge $$$ on the car....
Remember....you have to have the vin# and the miles all match on the car or you get a warning AND the off car data bases from Carfax that use the Vin...if you swap all parts...the Vin read on an adb or inspection station electronically will not match the ones stamped on the car....
Tell your buddy the worst idea ever....
If it was EASY as you friend thinks....Evey dishonest car dealer would be doing it...just like he is proposing after hearing stories about how folks did it 30+ years ago....
Well...it is not 30 yeaes ago....
If I recall, the parts when sold new can have a new miles and Vin entered ONCE (to match the other locations to prevent the mismatch warning) in the first few miles....so replacement is possible..but swaps, not so much.

 

I should clarify. I'm looking to buy the 2005 with 44k miles on it. The miles seem extremely low for that year car. My buddy and I were talking about it and he said maybe it's not the actual mileage and the owner has swapped out the guage from another mini that had less miles on it.

ZippyNH -- So is there a way one could tell that there has been a swap done. Does the car give some sort of error on the dash?

 

Realistically, an '05 with 44k miles on it is fairly common (relatively) in the MINI community. If I were in the same buying situation, I wouldn't even give it a second thought.

 

The running a Carfax...
Yes..the car would give you a mismatch on start...
Most odb2 readers will read the vin# electronically... You can check this number vs the car stamped number...
With modern cars....it is almost impossible to get away with....unless nobody looks...
Many mini's are weekend only cars, some track cars....so some with VERY now miles still pop up...heck many mini's sat in a garage with other toys.....and never got driven...
10,000 mile 10 year old cars still appear....but cars can have more issues from sitting...unless properly stored.
Good luck.

 

+1
Ditto!!

 

ZippyNH -- Where would the mismatch show upon start up?

 

I bought my '05 with 28k miles 1.5 years ago

previous owner traded in for a VW and was in the service and apparently did 4 tours

 

Many folks use a MINI as a third car. Low mileage cars are out there if one looks. OP does the condition of the car match the miles? Personally I wouldn't worry about it, but that's me.

 

FYI it's now 2023, 9 years since your post and I bought a MINI R50 this summer with 30K original miles. The mileage matches the CARFAX reports and also the ECU.

 

no, that won’t happen. I replaced my stock ECU with a LINK ECU and don’t have a problem with starting or mileage error.

 

Ahem.

I just did this a week or two ago. Put a center “clock” with lower miles into my car.


so to clarify.

1: minis don’t have a tamper dot like bmws of the same vintage do.
2: the displayed odo reading comes from center Speedo/nav/chrono. Whatever it has is what you get. Put on3 in with lower miles, it shows lower miles.
3: a mismatch will throw up a code on a scanner, and of course you can see the differing vins side by side when you run ncs/ pasoft1.4.

4 if you swap center “clock”, you MUST revirginize them first to be able to pull vin and odo data from EWS so all matches and the correct miles are displayed.

 

When the clock or tach doesn't match the ECU and BCU you won't ever be able to clear these errors and several systems like Carly will trigger on the false display.

 

You can actually, but only by revirginizing the “Speedo” or to be more accurate the center clock/cluster and thus actually fixing the mismatch.
btw @ilookmarvlus the tach has nothing to do with it, they are free swap. Single or dual.

no coding no nothing in those, they are simply auxiliary gauges driven by the center “clock”, to use the Brit term as it is more encompassing of the three types.

Iirc the true base model mini, aka the mini One doesn’t even have the tach. It has nothing. No glove box, no tach, no asc, no fogs, etc etc.