Mileage Concern

SouthTexan said:

The mileage is from the ECM so even swapping the gauge cluster will not alter mileage. You have to actually reprogram the ECM to do it.

Click to expand...

If you swap clusters your odometer will read differently. But the mileage is also stored in the PCM or whatever computer system keeps track of it.

This is Scary, Like others, Im guessing the dealer has no clue and is a victim in the scheme as well. Sucks for all parties involved.

wow this is nuts, did you just happen to stumble upon that discrepancy one day? What red flags did you notice?

Wiggleroom said:

wow this is nuts, did you just happen to stumble upon that discrepancy one day? What red flags did you notice?

Click to expand...

Yes, I was looking at the trailer settings, to set them for a trailer that I planned to tow, and saw that "Trailer 1" was selected and had the trip mileage shown in the picture.

I'll be happy to detail the items that were red flags to me, but I would prefer to wait until I confirm one way or the other and start down a path of reconciliation if necessary. I am very nervous about the whole situation, and I don't want to do anything that might be to my detriment down the road.

I am currently working to get in at the local Ram dealer, but I am having trouble speaking with someone who understands the situation, and why I really need to be with the Tech, to document with pictures, if there is an odometer conflict. The service adviser does not really understand the potential gravity of the situation. I have left a message with the service manager but have yet to get a return call.

Nine Four said:

Yes, I was looking at the trailer settings, to set them for a trailer that I planned to tow, and saw that "Trailer 1" was selected and had the trip mileage shown in the picture.

I'll be happy to detail the items that were red flags to me, but I would prefer to wait until I confirm one way or the other and start down a path of reconciliation if necessary. I am very nervous about the whole situation, and I don't want to do anything that might be to my detriment down the road.

I am currently working to get in at the local Ram dealer, but I am having trouble speaking with someone who understands the situation, and why I really need to be with the Tech, to document with pictures, if there is an odometer conflict. The service adviser does not really understand the potential gravity of the situation. I have left a message with the service manager but have yet to get a return call.

Click to expand...

Man, you would think this was an easy concept for them to understand. I hope you get on the path to resolution quickly.....

Feel for you dude.

tjfdesmo said:

Not jumping to conclusions, but fudging odometers is a big deal.

Click to expand...

No doubt. This is HUGE deal with major implications to the seller.

I hope this all works out quickly and painlessly.

FWIW, with my recent used 2017 Ram purchase. It had 12300mi on the ODO. ~50 idle hours and ~500 run time hours.

To me, 10x that hours would be ~120K miles.

G-Ride990 said:

If you swap clusters your odometer will read differently. But the mileage is also stored in the PCM or whatever computer system keeps track of it.

Click to expand...

It didn't for a friend of mine that swapped out his base gauge cluster (like the OP's) on his Tradesman for one he pulled off a wrecked Laramie.

So I wonder what happens if you change to an unlocked PCM to run a Diablo Tuner and then swap it back to the OEM one....

I may have missed it, but I had not seen anyone post about that yet. I know I read a lot of questions asking if you switch to an unlocked PCM then switched back to the OEM when getting work done at the dealer, but never saw if those questions were answered.

Could this be the result of something like that? Pull out the OEM PCM, run it on an unlocked PCM for 100K miles then swap it back in with a cluster from a lower mile truck? Just thinking out loud here.

damn , well i'm following and good luck.. if its really the case hopefully a new motor in the future with the least stressful path possible

Wiggleroom said:

damn , well i'm following and good luck.. if its really the case hopefully a new motor in the future with the least stressful path possible

Click to expand...

Shoot. New motor, tranny, rear end, suspension components. They’ll be buying that truck back.

SouthTexan said:

It didn't for a friend of mine that swapped out his base gauge cluster (like the OP's) on his Tradesman for one he pulled off a wrecked Laramie.

Click to expand...

It did for my bighorn. I went from a base to a premium and everything from miles to hours displayed what the ad for the cluster showed here. You are the first one I have seen that didn't have that happen. Most people pay a few hundred dollars to get their clusters corrected. I wonder why yours changed.

Oddly, the oil life monitor remained the same though. So that must be saved elsewhere.

Back to OP's post though.I hope it all works out and now I wonder what my truck will show when I eventually sell it. There was only about a couple hundred mile difference between clusters when I swapped mine.

I was able to take the truck to a dealership in a neighboring town, where the Assistant Service Manager seemed to understand what was going on and offered to put the scanner on the truck.

He said that he was able to look at the cluster mileage and the PCM mileage and verified that they do match. After looking at the hours through my scanner yesterday, I was interested to see if the hours matched between the two as well. For whatever reason, he was unable to find the Drive and Idle hours in the data. Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough on the Ram scanner to know if the hours are available or where to tell him to find them.

So...I contacted the purchasing dealership and let them know what I found, but that even with the mileage match, I believe there are too many red flags to believe the mileage is correct. They understood my concern and asked that I bring the truck to them, where they would put it on their scanner and or take it to the Ram dealer across the street to put it on their scanner.

I am hopeful that they will be able to find the Drive and Idle hours to either corroborate or disprove what the hours say on my scanner. I assume my scanner is just using generic OBD2 protocol, so I'm not sure why the Ram scanner could not show the hours.

[QUOTE="Nine Four, post: 1732724, member: 65574" I'm not sure why the Ram scanner could not show the hours.View attachment 128960[/QUOTE]

Good question, Another red Flag maybe, perhaps it DID show the hours, but you didnt get that info. That would make more sense from the purchasing dealer though than a third party dealer.

Random question here, but since it is a relatively late model truck and not purchased through a Ram dealer, where did the selling dealer acquire it? Trade? Auction? If I were them I would be preparing the paper trail to go back down stream to the source, unless of course it was them......buy 120K mile late model desirable truck, swap out cluster, do some shady things and make the spread.....

River19 said:

Random question here, but since it is a relatively late model truck and not purchased through a Ram dealer, where did the selling dealer acquire it? Trade? Auction? If I were them I would be preparing the paper trail to go back down stream to the source, unless of course it was them......buy 120K mile late model desirable truck, swap out cluster, do some shady things and make the spread.....

Click to expand...

I have no reason to believe that the purchasing dealer has any involvement in this potential mileage issue. They have provided, what I currently believe to be, honest communication. They lead me to believe they have a genuine concern for my needs and the position I am in.

I have also been very pleased with the Ram dealer that the purchasing dealer and I are working with this morning. After the initial stock responses of this not being possible, they continued to ask questions to better understand the situation. At the current time, they seem to have a genuine interest in determining if there has been any manipulation.

Thank you again to everyone who has responded or reached out privately. I will continue to update as information comes in and time permits.

Spitballing here because I’ve not done such things, but from what I’ve gathered from other threads in the past,

A Towing truck that had either used a second ECM with a flash tune and swapped back to stock and bought a low mileage dash to match? Or something of the sort. Is there any deletes on the truck?

The visit to the dealership Wednesday morning wound up being pretty frustrating. This dealership, like the one I went to on Tuesday, was unable to find the hours through their OE scanner. I was allowed to go back with the technician and watch as he looked at the data. I can say that he spent a fair amount of time trying to find a data field for the hours, and could not find it. The technician initiated a trouble ticket with Mopar for guidance on how to find the hour value in their system. I called them this morning to follow up, and they have not heard back from Mopar. They said it could take up to 48 hours.

I did take my scanner with me, and was able to show the technician and service manager the hours from my scanner vs the hours on the cluster. I followed that up with asking if they had a truck on the lot that I could put my scanner on, to see what my scanner says vs that trucks cluster. They had a 2500 in the service department that they allowed me to connect to. The drive and idle time were not exactly the same as the cluster, but the total time (both added up) of the scanner and the cluster were within a few hours. Not thousands of hours difference like on my truck.

I guess that the next step is to see what happens with the trouble ticket with Mopar. If someone on here is familiar with the OE scanner software and knows how to display hour data, I would greatly appreciate some guidance on that.

Sorry to hear the progress is slow moving. Hope that some good news is down the pipeline

I noticed that when I have the key in the ignition and turned to the RUN position, the idle hours counts up. I put it in RUN when I have the doors open to listen to the radio. In ACC it gives that constant chime reminding you the key is still in the ignition.

Wonder if that could be it?

14RAM4X4 said:

I noticed that when I have the key in the ignition and turned to the RUN position, the idle hours counts up. I put it in RUN when I have the doors open to listen to the radio. In ACC it gives that constant chime reminding you the key is still in the ignition.

Wonder if that could be it?

Click to expand...

If he is off by thousands of hours, then we would have to believe that person was either living in his truck, a psychopath, or was a tow vehicle that would park on the side of a highway doing exactly what you just said waiting for his next call (they do this here a lot).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk