I am looking at buying a 1970 F-100 (I know this is the 73-79 blog but I own a '77 and I like it here). The odometer shows 87k miles and the lady selling it said she thinks that is original because the numbers in the odometer line up nice and even. She seemed to know a lot about Fords and went on to say that when a Ford rolls over 100,000, the first number will be slightly out of line or sometimes all the numbers won't line up. While I have certainly seen high milage trucks with odometer numbers that don't line up, I assumed that was due to wear. You would think a guy could easily tell the difference between 87,000 and 187,000 miles, but out here in the desert, nothing rusts and everything is sun damaged.

So the question is; is this a true story or a myth? Can you tell if an odometer has rolled over by looking at the alignment of the numbers? And if it is true, is it true of all Ford products?

I've bought and sold a lot of cars and never heard of this. It would be a handy thing to know.

Thanks for the advice,
Paul B
'77 F350 Camper Special

 

I can't answer your question directly, but I can speak of my own experiences.
I have a '78 F-250 that the odometer has turned over on, twice. The numbers do not line up and haven't since it rolled over the first time. In fact, the nuber alignment became worse after it roller over the second time.
I have had similar experiences with a '68, a '72 and an '80 F-series as well.

Roger Carter

 

It's true that the alignment of the digits decreases as the odometer reading increases (and eventually rolls over) - but it has more to do with the fact that the number of times each digit has advanced increases as you move from left to right. Each time a single digit advances, the digit to the right has advanced 10 times more, so on and so forth. Due to clearances within the odometer gears themselves, each digit is not guaranteed to be at the exact same position once it circles back 10 times later.

In other words, the effect you are describing has little to do with having rolled over. The digits are likely to be just as out of alignment when changing from 89,999 to 90,000 as they are when changing from 99,999 back to zero. It seems completely possible to get "lucky" and have them realign much later - so I don't believe you can use truly use odometer alignment to "guess" at a sixth digit.

However, my experiences are similar to Roger's. My truck has about 102K on it and the "2" is severely misaligned. However, at 87K, that seems like it may have been plenty of time to push back toward realignment. At the end of the day, if you truly want to know the truck's mileage, you have to rely on its documentation.

 

I have a old car , 1964 , i bought new so i know the odometer is correct , but after rolling over three times they do not line up.