Vin check

[jeanro]

As I am going on with bringing back to road my newly acquired 88 735i, manual transmission, I came upon another question: How many miles are on my car ? The original instrument cluster chip was corrupted as it was showing something to the 225225 extent, so I purchased an used one from a junk car yard that shows 210245 miles which represents the correct miles of the donor car-also correctly indicates all the functions on the OBD: consumption, average speed, etc. I know that the car sat for the last 18 years....Maybe a CARFAX report? Can somebody run one for me?
Thank you,
Jean

[jclausen]

Running the vin won't help, have somebody scan the car there probably is info in the dme ( engine computer)

[jeanro]

Jclausen, my car is an 88. There are no computer ports other than the big, round one in the engine bay. Is the scanning going to be performed using that one?

[jeanro]

Just ran a Carfax Report:Jclausen was right as it did not show a lot of records....

[kce1900]

Jclausen, my car is an 88. There are no computer ports other than the big, round one in the engine bay. Is the scanning going to be performed using that one?

Yes, that big, round plug is used for scanning, but it will give you only error codes. And a car from 1988 will give you only very few codes. The mileage is stored only in the chip in the cluster. There are three different versions of clusters: gray, white and blue. Their chips are not interchangeable. White and blue have a chips that are plugged into the back of the cluster. The gray clusters have them integrated into the brown plug. White and blue chips can be reprogrammed, so you could store the correct vehicle data and a mileage that comes close to what the car has. I known a guy in Germany who can do that. Maybe there are people on this side of the pond as well.

How different is the donor car from yours? If they have the same engine and only the mileage is off by 5%, I would probably leave it as is. Maybe take a picture of the old cluster installed and document what you did.

[jeanro]

kce1900, you are right: my chip is located inside the brown plug. The donor car was identical, the only difference is that it was an automatic and mine is a manual. All the measurements are quite correct. Now, my car sat under a tarp on a barn ( last sticker was on 2001) and does not seem to have a lot of miles as the undercarriage is clean as well the engine and all the mechanics in it. Rubber bushings and hoses are getting replaced as we speak: everything seems to come back to life with some minor items that are frozen passenger seat motors, some relays etc. I wish I would have known the real mileage: odometer with the donor plug shows over 200k miles....engine sound and pulls really really good, tranny and clutch are very good as well-way better than a 200k one...