Import km readings...

[YBSLO4]

Hey peoples,

Been thinking bout it for a while now, and just wondered how many people have actually realised how many imports have had hte km's wound back on them. It becomes obvious when you have a fair few mates who all have R33's like me i kno 5 of us not including me, and i have the newest being a 95, yet i have the most km's at 81,000 and also paid the most for the car itself out of us. A mate i kno has a early 93 model with like 55,000km's and he denies any possibility at the fact it has definately been wound back. He, like all of them are experience problems like cam belts worn, and suspension getting lose and squeaky etc. stuff you expect to see at 100K+ and so on and they stillw ont admit it has been turned back. Yet mw with the msot km's on a car which i hand picked for this specific reason from japan on the auctions, and have had no problems at all... it just shows that when it comes to imports be careful when you go for lower km's cos it usually means not good. Its an easy seller to wind the km's back as it adds value instantly, and also danger. But it just gets me cut at how many you can so obviously tell have been wound back yet sold at prices for one's with those genuine km's and people believe it... i guess it helps to know what signs to look for when buying, but alot of people are being fooled!!

[dAVE]

problem with most aussies is they place a large empahsis on km's... where it should be on condition. I know of plenty of non imports that are sold with wound back kilometers. We had a car in at work with 120+k and found the service book under the back seat... it had done 120k ... 4 years ago!

[YBSLO4]

Yeah its dodgy as i swear... the thing is it isn't us who wind them back, they do it before the auctions in japan to reach higher prices from overseas buyers who don't see the cars. It happens a lot and i urge people liek you do to buy on condition not km's, cos you find out very quick if its done the km's or not anyway trust me.

[Mick Trainer]

I am yet to find one that has not been wound back including my own. I think more often than not they have just taken the 1 off the front of them. Where do people think these cars have been? In a garage for ten years with the suspension being bounced all day long. There is a reason these cars are cheap. You have to take a risk with them.

Mick.

[dojobi]

I am pretty sure mine isn't wound back. It came with docs showing servicing and it had just had the 100,000km service (also, doc'd). Either that or it had just done 200,000km .

[xRHETTx]

I was just at a car yard in Melbourne that specialises in imports this morning. All the skylines were 70-90kms, half of them had the sticker on the cam belt cover that says that the timing belt had been changed in japan at 100kms. Hmmm. And worse still, i could tell that those without the stickers had had them taken off - u could still c the mark of the outline on the plastic....

[rev210]

The kms are often genuine but, the fact is the engine has done many more hrs. The hours of the engines are high to to the traffic in Japan. The stand still traffic conditions 'carbon up' the engine on top of the poluted air.

[ix9]

Mine had done 80,000kms when I bought it, but I knew they were genuine as the interior condition was almost perfect.

Things to to look out for are steering wheels, gear shift knobs, door handles.... all the wear and tear bits...

[YBSLO4]

Yep deifnately easy to show by wear of interior. Mine shocked me when i first saw it as hte back seats had litterally never been sat in as the car was owned by a signle dude in japan my importer knew and was the reason he bought it off him and imported for me cos he knew he looked after it. The dash, gearboot etc are all perfect. I guess i was lucky but it pays to take ya time. And just cos thye are all fairly cheap now doesn't mena they are stuffed, as japan has no option but to offload them and the cheaper they are the more they move. Quiet smart actually cos it plays a big part in the aftermarket parts scene as people can afford to buy the car with leftovers to mod whereas in aus trying to buy a stock rexy form say 96/7 is still around double th eprice of most imported cars that are popular :-/

[fatz]

anyone who thinks ks r genuine

is a fool

how do you increase value of a car at an internet auction

wind the k's back

"its not rocket science"

[fatz]

i just did a timming belt on a 68k soarer

looket liket he belt had bone 200k

lol

[YBSLO4]

books make it fairly genine tho dude

[Guest dori]

my mate had a 96 series2 r33, it was immaculate in and out. bought it locally, 2nd aussie owner. it showed 11.000km on the clock, car was stock and a week after he bought it the clutch died completely. later on we saw his exact car on an import site, it was his exact car cause the photos were also taken in perth before he bought it... it said 45,000km lol

my mate has a 95 with 100,000km on it, and my other mate had a 95 with 63,000km on it. the 100,000km's car interior showed way less wear, could have given it the '55,000' km wind back if they wanted to.

[warrior_350]

Looking at interior wear is the key, mine had 77000kms (pretty sure its genuine or at least very close) when i bought it and the interior is near perfect. Sure the handbrake boot is a bit buggered but the car shows other signs of sun damage form sitting in the sun too long, not from long km's like the rear window rubber has shrunk a bit etc. You need to know what to look for the km's it says is pretty irrelevant when buying a jap import

[(B1) MR_fanny]

isnt it funny how the majority of imports (93-95) that come in are around 60-65ks from import yards?? every ad that i have seen i can pretty much guess striaght away how many k's the cars done before even scrolling down to read it....65-70ks i got mine 3yrs back (95) with 63k's on it which i thought was pretty high at the time but genuine. importer told me it was owned by a businessman who smokes and had a habbit of pickin at his steering wheel at the lights....haha. when it landed i couldnt believe how clean the interior was...good as new with the odd ciggy burn here and there that was expected. glad i got my hands on a good one.

[(B1) MR_fanny]

i was under the impression that the 100k sticker was a remidner to change the belt at 100k's just like the sticker on the air box to say to change every 60k's??

[dan_the_man]

Yeah they dont put a 100,000km silver sticker on if the belt has already been changed at 100,000kms do they

[Airzone]

Look at the clock, then look at the condition of the car. If they don't match, then it's been wound back.

I got mine with "42,000" km on the clock... For a '95 car in January this year.. Yeah, right. I've added 11,000 on it in 6 months. But the car's in pristine nick. If the owner has wound it back, then he has also taken real good care of the car

[Nismo_R33]

For the traffic in Japan, I think it also depends on which part of Japan... Big city or country side... I have a little sticker on the back of my car in Japanese, I believe that is something like rego and showing which province my car came from.

[usuckpoo]

Ultimately the odometer is perhaps one of the most unreliable ways to judge the condition of a japanese import.

As mentioned before by some guys, interior condition is a much better guage. More importantly, it highlights the fact that the owner in japan has taken care of the car, regardless of how far the car has travelled.

IMHO the best way to guage the mileage on the car is the sheer age of the car- Think about it, unless its a gtr, the car is most likely to have been the owners primary mode of transport. (Even then a GTR could be primary mode of transport)

An average daily driver does abt 15-25 thousand kms a year.

If you have a 95 gtst that claims to have 80000 on the clock, it works out to be 10000km a year. Which is rather low for a daily driver.

Of course there are always exceptions to the case, and there are a few lucky few whose cars have not been wound back.

But think about it:

How many of us put a mere 10000km on our daily driven cars per year?

Whats the likelihood that the car(suppose its a gtst) was a japanese owner's 2nd car during its life in japan?