I'm hoping the statute of limitations has expired on this little admission of guilt.

Several decades ago, while still living at home,I had saved up and bought a brand new motorcycle, still in the crate (supposedly with some superficial crate damage on a fork). My first new vehicle ever. The bike was the previous year model, and I bought it in the Winter time, so I got a deal on it. Paid in cash. We were having a snowy Winter and there was NO way, as a new rider, that I was going to ride a street bike in the snow. The dealership had so much snow in the parking lot that they explained it would take a couple weeks for them to clear the parking lot of snow and pull the bike out to assemble it. A couple weeks later they call to tell me it's ready for pick up, and I call a friend with a truck so we can load it up and take it back to my folks' garage. Turns out the forklift punched through the crate, but missed the steering fork, so the bike was in perfect mint shape with nary a ding.

While doing the registration paperwork one form asked about insurance. I went to the salesman and explained that, as I hadn't planned on riding it until Spring that I didn't have insurance in it. He told me just to check the box saying that I did have insurance on it, and just to make sure that I did add insurance before I started driving it on the road. As a young kid buying his first new vehicle, this seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

Fast forward a couple months, and while most of the snow was over and melted, it was still cold out...but I got the itch to ride my new toy, so I would fire it up and drive my sport bike around our backyard only.

One day I get a letter from the DMV stating they had no record of my having insurance on the bike and I had 30 days to provide proof of insurance on the day of registration, or my DL would be revoked.

Living at home at the time, my Dad figured I'd wreck into somebody causing damage, and that he would be held legally liable for any damage I caused, so he required me to get full coverage. I called several insurance companies, all telling me the same thing, that they didn't even offer full coverage to a new rider with a sport bike. When I explained this to my Dad he grudgingly lifted the requirement, but calling around again and honestly explaining the situation, none would agree to backdate coverage, even when I offered to pay for it.

I went back to the dealership I bought the bike from, explained the situation to the manager, and just asked if they would write up a short note of explanation that I could submit at the DMV hearing, but he wasn't going to accept responsibility, even though I followed his salesman's suggestion.

The DMV revoked my DL, but gave me the option to request a hearing on the matter, so I got on our brand new Timex computer , typed up an explanation of the situation as honestly as I could, and requested the hearing.

Thinking that I might have to load the bike into a truck and present it as evidence at the hearing, I went into the garage and ran the odometer backwards over an hour or so, and ran about 6 or 7 miles of backyard riding off of it.

A couple weeks later I received a letter back from the DMV and, apparently after reading my explanation/ admission, decided to show some mercy to a dumb kid like me, by issuing me a harsh verbal warning about what would happen if I failed to comply and re-instating my DL.

All these years later, now in the digital odometer age, I figured rolling back odometers was a thing of the past, but apparently not.

Of the two, the audio clip is more informative.

@ 11 minute audio clip interview

https://koacolorado.iheart.com...dometer-fraud-issue/


@ 3 minute interview


https://m.youtube.com/watch?ti...jn8&feature=emb_logo

Odometer kill switches were pretty popular once the electronic speedometers were introduced in the automotive side, more than once we found those when a vehicle came in for service, once the odometer reading was sent through the VCM/PCM as in later years that started losing favor.

I knew of a few people that were dealership employees that did it to their own cars, mainly leases and got caught. To me it never was worth it.

Back in the days before it was a federal offense to alter an odometer on a cable driven speedometer one of the jobbers that sold us parts offered an under the table sale to us, a 50% reduction box between the transmission and the speedometer or if we had cruise control between the transducer and the Speedo head so the speed input was correct for the engine but at 70 the Speedo would still indicate 35. The dealership was squeaky clean, I know when he touted those to the parts manager he was told to hit the bricks and not come back.

I personally never cared how many miles I had on a vehicle when I sold it, condition meant more that miles to me and apparently to the purchasers also.

I never considered myself a fraudster. Nor did I care. I'm a Jeepster. Been one of those critters since 1977. Lots of years.

The older Jeeps had a central instrument cluster. I would buy them, swap the fuel gauge or temp gauge, then resell them at parts swap meets. Noticed early on that a cluster with low miles would sell for more $$ than one with high miles. Then while I had the clusters off to repair them I just discovered a pair of tiny scrwdrivers could be used to pry the digits apart and set one with 91,000 miles to 21,000.

Later with some interest a buddy pointed out I was "altering" the mileage. Not me, man. It was the buyer who swapped the high mileage cluster into his jeep that was at fault. All was well until I bought an old but good condition Mercedes. Fun car. But I noticed I'd bought it with 90,000 or so miles and one day it was down to about 11,000. Then the following week it would read 21,00 or so. Then suddenly it was up to 32,000, then 44,000.

One day I had a knock at the front door. It was a state guy, inquiring about speedometer readings. I brought him inside and showed him my invoices from the local dealership. Over the course of a year I'd put on over 100,000 miles. Same rattling old car, still in really good shape. The prick I sold it to went to them to complain. He wanted to get me busted for being a bad guy. I didn't care, and neither did the state guy. He told me to keep my receipts to use to defend myself if anything ever came of it.

So I asked him for a favor. Sent him to the new owners house to inspect the then current reading. In a few weeks, he'd gone 20,000 or so miles. Those are all round figures.

Isn’t the odometer just a servo? Couldn’t you feed it a different voltage than it is designed for and that would change the output?