Odometer has reset itself

[MrHeavyFoot]

The other day, I noticed that my odometer was much lower than it had been previously. I checked my gas receipts to be sure. The last time I filled up the reading was 43249 km. Its now at 28156! I was thinking that maybe it was displaying miles instead of km, but that doesn't quite work out right: 43249km = 26873 miles meaning I would have had to travel almost 1300 miles on one tank.

I'm not sure exactly when this happened, but I suspect it was when I disconnected the battery while trying to figure out why the car wouldn't start. I know the trip odometer was set back to zero after disconnecting the battery but I don't recall what the main one was.

It may also have happened a few days later when I used a VAG-COM to clear some codes, and just snoop around a bit. It was the shareware version, so other than clearing codes, its not supposed to be able to make any changes.

Ever heard of this?

[1.8Trip]

Hmm. Most interesting. Now you can sell your car as a low mileage vehicle!

[MrHeavyFoot]

Originally posted by 1.8Trip
Hmm. Most interesting. Now you can sell your car as a low mileage vehicle!

Yeah, that occured to me too. :mrsly:

I'm going to hook up the VAG-COM tonight and see what it has for the country code. Found a post on the Vortex with the various codes.

[uv23]

Selling a car with false odometer readings is serious business. You should get the issue resolved ASAP.

[R_Ethug]

Yes take it to a dealer

[1.8Trip]

I wouldn't take it to a dealer until I was completely sure I didn't do it.

[R_Ethug]

yea i guess.. that would kinda freak me out

[Kor]

I've disconnected the battery many times and not had that problem... I thought that these clusters were not programmable if they had over 100kms on them...

[Flanders]

I'm with Kor.

I' ve had my battery out several times and never had such a problem!!

[MrHeavyFoot]

Well, I'll try some stuff tonight and see what happens.

Does the odometer actually store the mileage (kilometerage?) or does it just pull it from the ECU? Can you query the mileage through VAG-COM?

[R_Ethug]

it holds it i beleive

[bart]

on a car that costs $30k, its much harder to reset the odo then to unplug the current, its not volalitle memory, lol.

[Gumby]

The mileage is held in the odometer, you can access it with a code in the scan tool and add kms but not subtract (though a few slipped through that you could lower i heard) other than that i think you cluster might be pooped!

[MrHeavyFoot]

Originally posted by bart
on a car that costs $30k, its much harder to reset the odo then to unplug the current, its not volalitle memory, lol.

I'm not saying its supposed to work that way, I'm just saying it might have.

[MrHeavyFoot]

Well, it happened again....

First I hooked up the VAG-COM and found the reading for the odometer and it was the same as the display (well, 6 km difference actually). So, I decided to disconnect the battery again in hopes that it would magically reset itself. Left it disconnected for a couple of minutes and when I powered up again the odometer had changed: from 28166 to 27855km. Did it once more and it didn't change again. The trip odometer also resets to zero every time I do this, but that has never struck me as odd. Why keep something like that in non-volatile memory.

Any ideas?

In the VAG-COM, on the same display as the odometer reading, there is a resistance reading. Don't know if its related, but mine says 284 ohms. Could some check their's and compare?

Thanx.