Odometer Mileage Decreasing - yes really!!

C

cj10jeeper

Lifer
Lichfield, England
Have to admit I have no idea what's going on here:

Purchased my daughters BMW 1 series last year and a week later it went in for warranty work (dual mass flywheel). Not trusting the garage with the car for a week I took a photo of the mileage before and after and it dropped by 200 miles. Took it up with the dealer and they denied any knowledge and in fact got upset I was in effect accusing them of clocking it.

Fast forward to Wednesday this week and the car died and was jump started. This time the mileage dropped for 72,000 to 67,522 and remained at that.

Last night I came home fitted a new battery and it dropped by another few hundred miles when connected up.

The car now has less miles on it that the Last MOT and before we purchased it 10 months ago.

I know how mileage is stored on the Zed in the LCM, odometer and I think ECU, but WTF is going on with the 1 series??
 
Sounds like a case for "Honest John" at the daily telegraph, he would probably know of any strange goings on with the 1 series.

Andi.
 
What does the service interval say - does it go up by thousands of miles as well?
 
Christine- certainly seems like it

Good point re Honest John :)

PVR - not checked that out. Did the battery late yesterday when I got back from Ireland and car is out for the day. Will look later.
 
I'd take it up with BMW and tell them that if they don't fix it for free, you'll be talking to the local paper and Watchdog giving them a story about people not being able to trust the odometer readings on BMWs
 
The other thing is, how true was the mileage when you bought it if this issue existed before, i.e. was the true mileage higher but had been dropping before or do the MOT certificates indicate it is a recent problem?
 
pvr said:
The other thing is, how true was the mileage when you bought it if this issue existed before, i.e. was the true mileage higher but had been dropping before or do the MOT certificates indicate it is a recent problem?
Click to expand...

Everything looked good from services to MOT's checked out online. Look of the car frankly is of <50k so no issues there. seems to be related to taking the battery out/disconnecting the power.

I'll speak to BMW, but somehow doubt they will either believe me nor fix it.

My preference is to understand how this can happen. When you stop and think, it's beyond bizarre and while it sounds good the car could become unsaleable...
 
That is very strange indeed.. This hasnt tripped the tamper switch?

Can you replicate it by unplugging the battery? Atleast you could show the engineer it!


Sent from my iPhone 5s using Tapatalk
 
aquazi said:
That is very strange indeed.. This hasnt tripped the tamper switch?

Can you replicate it by unplugging the battery? Atleast you could show the engineer it!


Sent from my iPhone 5s using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


If by tamper switch you mean the dot that appears on the mileage reading, then no.

In a way it was replicated by changing the battery as that dropped the mileage some more last night. Don't want to just keep doing it as who knows what it goes to next time...
 
If you can replicate it by disconnecting the battery and then reconnecting, maybe an idea to video the process and post it online. Am sure someone would be interested in this issue, even if it's not your local BMW dealership.
 
Did at any point you hit 88mph? :wink:

This is absolutely baffling! I would love to know what is causing it but cannot begin to think what. Perhaps send BMW a video when you remove the battery terminals? To prove it?
 
Cars back and done a 40 mile trip and has correctly started to increase mileage as driven, but still around 5k shy of actual

Next service is now showing as due, so that's got zeroed out during the error, but easy enough to reset.
 
Certainly a good one ... It should hold the mileage in 5 different places including both keys ... I'll be with a bmw master tech on Sunday I'll ask the question
 
lotus791 said:
Certainly a good one ... It should hold the mileage in 5 different places including both keys ... I'll be with a bmw master tech on Sunday I'll ask the question
Click to expand...

That would be useful. I'm strapped for time to get the car to a dealer and frankly they'll just look at me gone out. Your comment is exactly as per my expectation that it's stored in multiple places and indeed if yo tamper with one it affects the others. In theory what's happening isn't possible.
 
cj10jeeper said:
...as per my expectation that it's stored in multiple places and indeed if yo tamper with one it affects the others.
Click to expand...
Do you have software to directly read the mileage in the various modules? I'm wondering if the internal numbers stored in the modules are correct, and that it is the display malfunctioning, displaying an incorrect number.
 
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