It is only unethical if you represent your car to be something it is not.
IOW, it is only unethical if you use the odometer reading to LIE or CHEAT!
It is fairly simple to reset the odometer wheels. You can see how to do it in
my speedometer manual at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/arhodes
The way I see it, with 80k on the speedo originally and about 20k since then,
it is about to turn over to zeros again! (First time? Second?) So, if you
set the speedo to zero, it is actually CLOSER to the correct reading than it is
now!
With all these restored (re-re-restored) cars, the common question is
"HOW MANY MILES DOES IT REALLY HAVE?", but the way I see it, is it ought to
be "WHATS WORN OUT AND TOO EXPENSIVE TO REPLACE?"
My white TR4A has 65,000 on the odo, and is that 160k, 260K or what?
Is it even the original speedo? Since the car was competely disassembled
and restored about 10 yr ago, and is still on the new tires installed
at that time, it is essentially a 10 year old car with some older parts...
I say set the odo to ZERO so you can tell how many miles since restoration!!
-Tony
Message text written by INTERNET:triumphs-owner@autox.team.net
>Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 21:32:20 -0500
From: Gary Klein <gklein@toad.net>
Subject: Odometer Resetting - An Ethical Question??
Fellow Scions,
I've been working at restoring my '75 TR6 for a little over 2 years now
and it's been a long haul but the light at the end of the tunnel is
starting to get a bit brighter, day by day. As the dash and gauges will
be going back together in the near future, I've been pondering the
question of what to do, if any, about the odometer?
I will have completely rebuilt just about everything when I'm done
(engine, tranny, clutch, body, paint, interior, etc, etc,) and I intend
on keeping and using this car for quite some time, 5-10 years at least.
The speedometer read 16K and a few miles when I bought it (I assumed
116K+) and I put a few miles on it before I tore it down. Upon
disassembly of the speedometer to clean the face (BTW the Endust trick
works great) I noticed a handwritten date and what appears to be a
mileage statement written in pencil on the inside of the back cover.
The date was long after 1975, '87 if I recall, and the mileage was
somewhere in the 80K range. Needless to say, I don't know how many
miles were on this car before I got it and perhaps the speedometer is
not the original either.
So here's my question for which I'd like to get your collective
reactions and thoughts: As it's now about to be reborn, any thoughts
about resetting the odometer back to all zero's? If it can be done, how
does one do it? (it wasn't obvious to me when I took it apart and I
guess I don't have a criminal mind)
I'm not interested in any legal aspects here, just the ethics. I'll
post a summary when all the correspondence is done.
Thanks,
Gary
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