Never, ever, EVER, ever, EVER buy a car without checking it out first. EVER. I had to fly from CA to Detroit, MI to take a guy to court over a car that was NOTHING like his ad said. I won, but never got paid.
DO NOT DO IT.

Cheating on the odometers of our cars is as easy as swapping clusters. I think CarFax will list mileage when work was performed. You can use that to compare. Maybe DMV can provide into too.

 

Is this a common occurrence with evos? I feel like that's a worse case scenario when buying a car tho. I'll let you guys know about the mileage posted on carfax once I get the VIN

 

You could also see if there is a local evom member that could go check out the car/do a test drive and report back. What state is the car in?

 

The car is located near Littleton, Colorado. I feel like that is too much to ask of people that don't even know me or the seller.

 

Doesn't hurt to ask. Just throw up a post in the regional forums. If it were in WA, within say ~50 miles, I would have done it for you.

 

Good point, I appreciate it. I posted in the West regional forum, so hopefully I hear something.

 

It is a felony to roll back an odometer I believe!

 

Is there a reliable way to check the ECU to see if the odometer has been tampered with?

 

I don't know if there is any way to check an ECU for that info. Your best bet is to get a Carfax. You can check mileage on different dates the car was serviced, etc. That will help a lot, but that isn't always fool-proof and sometimes that info is lacking on the reports.

 

Also you can score a Carfax pretty cheap on Reddit. Search "Reddit Carfax". Sometimes people sell them on eBay too.

 

The person who thought to do that is pretty smart. just looked into it and he charges $5 to get a carfax, obviously owning the unlimited checks for 60 days for 70$. There was 24 requests over 2 weeks, meaning he broughtt in 120$, nearly doubling his money in 2 weeks.

 

I am guessing he has a dealer setup because I've used him multiple times and only by VIN - never by plate. Either way, that's the best way I've found to get one cheap!

 

Update, got the VIN this morning and was able to pull a carfax on the car. I would be the 5th owner, guy who had the car before me has only had it for a few months, and the previous 3 accounted for the rest of the time. Only thing to note was the car failed an emissions test in Colorado in 2014 but no mileage reported since 2014, which falls in the area if It has about 80k miles, which was 62k miles

 

So, knowing that the carfax is clean, and should the car pass an inspection and compression test, is there any reason not to buy the car?

 

Yea.. I got one for ya. Take the amount your about to spend on buying this red evo. And search the market for every single evo you can buy for that price.. if nothing is better then the ONE your looking at... go for it.. just know this is a one time thing and make sure you have no regrets... I personally looked at every single evo there was before I bought mine. I knew when I bought it that this was definately the one.

Mine was garage kept with 1 owner and it was an evo 9 SE with a built 5 speed transmission and a built transfer case/motor with 400 whp. For me this was perfect because I knew I was going to mod it anyways and it saved me thousands and thousands of dollars in mods it would have taken me years to get(not to mention it was built and maintained by CBRD) which says a lot for the quality of work.. no rust and in near mint condition