Odometer tampering on my 90q20v??

[Tim Atwood <atwood@ptc.com>]

Background: I bought my 20v in February of 1997 from a guy named Ken
Wantje, the 2nd or third owner, in NY with an indicated 88k miles on it.
The car seemed sound, but was not great cosmetically (which was ok with
me at the time since the price seemed right). It has run ok since then.
(I've repaired a few things: bomb, alternator, rear brakes, some
electricals, timing belt and water pump.) It now has 105k miles
indicated.

I took the instrument cluster out last weekend to fix a ground
connection to my tach and computer. While I had it out I pulled the
speedometer to check for any other bad connections (it cuts out every
now and then, tap on the dash will bring it back). I examined the
odometer mechanism, which has a gear shaft running across the bottom of
the rollers held in place by a plastic mount at each end. One of the
plastic mounts was both cracked and melted, as if someone had broken it
off, glued it back together and then hot melted it to make sure it
stayed in place (definitely not a dealer repair). From this evidence I
can only conclude that someone had tampered with it and broken it while
rolling the mileage back in the past. So my audi may have 50k or more
additional miles on it, who knows?

While there's not much I can probably do about it now, I'm putting this
experience out to everyone as a warning. Check your audi out thoroughly
before buying. If it looks like it has been neglected and/or heavily
worked upon (like mine did), check the maintenance records and
everything else you can find. Most audi owners I've run across on the
list are proud of the high mileage of their cars, so this type of
situation is probably not very common. I might have still bought the car
if it had 130k miles instead of 80k indicated, but it pisses me off a
little to find this out about the car in this manner. I was planning on
running my car into the ground anyway, so I'm not too worried about the
resale value, but I'd be seeking legal advice if I had intended to sell
it.

How's the latin go, caveat emptor?
-- 
Tim Atwood	Parametric Technology Corporation		DoD #1461
Burlington, MA	atwood@ptc.com					AMA #360999
1998 ZX-9R 	1990 90Q20V