2003 protege5 odometer question

[drewnow]

hi all--

looking at a 2003 mazda protege 5, buying from owner.

vehicle has a clean carfax except for one note:

"08/17/2010
BROWNSBURG,
IN
Motor Vehicle
Dept.
EXCEEDS MECHANICAL LIMITS

Odometer
Problem
Title and
ProblemCheck
The vehicle has odometer-related problems. These may include discrepancies such as
not actual miles, a broken odometer, exceeding a vehicles mechanical limits, a
mileage discrepancy, or suspect miles."

i found out this is likely one of two things:
1)the odometer has rolled over, thus it is not actual mileage.
2)someone checked "5 digits" instead of "6", on a form; thus leading to carfax thinking the odometer had rolled over.

i know the 2003 is a digital display...can anyone tell me whether it's 5 or 6 digits? i did drive this vehicle, and it said 70660...but couldn't tell whether there was room for another digit or not.

thanks!

 

[jdr01930]

Odometer is 6 digits - just bought one with 141,000 miles.

Car Fax on mine showed "INCONSISTENT ODOMETER READING " with Car Fox note that "It's tough to tell whether this is a sign of an odometer rollback or just a clerical error. Your best move is to get a mechanic or the seller to confirm the mileage."

In my case, it was pretty easy to figure out that it was most likely a clerical error - 93,800 was recorded as 73,800 at one point in it's history. When I made the correction, the amount of miles accumulated per month ended up being consistant with the corrected figure.

I did some math on a spread sheet to figure this out and confirm consistancy of milage accumulation, you might be able to do the same.

However, yours does sound rather ominous (says "it has odometer problems" rather than "it's tough to tell") - and in my case there was only 10,000 miles in question. With 100,000 in question you really gotta wonder and be careful.
Are there several milage point refernced in the car fax that you can line up and make sense of?

 

[tweety2300]

Sorry for the thread jack but at what point does it roll over is it 200k or 1,000,000 always wondered that

 

[drewnow]

Odometer is 6 digits - just bought one with 141,000 miles.

Car Fax on mine showed "INCONSISTENT ODOMETER READING " with Car Fox note that "It's tough to tell whether this is a sign of an odometer rollback or just a clerical error. Your best move is to get a mechanic or the seller to confirm the mileage."

In my case, it was pretty easy to figure out that it was most likely a clerical error - 93,800 was recorded as 73,800 at one point in it's history. When I made the correction, the amount of miles accumulated per month ended up being consistant with the corrected figure.

I did some math on a spread sheet to figure this out and confirm consistancy of milage accumulation, you might be able to do the same.

However, yours does sound rather ominous (says "it has odometer problems" rather than "it's tough to tell") - and in my case there was only 10,000 miles in question. With 100,000 in question you really gotta wonder and be careful.
Are there several milage point refernced in the car fax that you can line up and make sense of?

There are only 2 points - once when the car was purchased new, and once when the car was purchased used (only 2 previous owners), at which point it was registered at:

5 01/30/2003
58,633 08/17/2010

also..doubt this makes any difference, but the report is from Autocheck and not CarFax.

though, if the odometer definitely has 6 digits...hmm.