I recently bought a 2012 F250 with a 6.7. Odometer is currently 69407 miles, I have a car fax that indicates mileage is correct, truck looks and drives like it has 69000. miles Truck had same owner since 2013. Now for my question, I have a Forscan tool that allows me to read the information contained in all of the modules installed on the truck including things like part numbers, calibration, strategy etc. My odometer reads 69407, my trans control module reads the same. I was shocked to see my PCM reads 298936 miles and about 9500 hours. The PCM VIN number matches the truck VIN but the mileage isn't even close. Could this mean the PCM was replaced at some time which explains the higher mileage or was the transmission control module and instrument cluster replaced and the truck actually has 300,000 miles. The reason I ask is the truck has a Carfax buyback guarantee if I find something like inaccurate mileage. I like the truck and the price I paid was a good deal at 69000 miles but a bad deal at 300,000 miles

 

That’s a major red flag to me, unless they can solidly prove to you the PCM was changed with a used one with very high hours and mileage which is also questionable why someone would put that high mileage PCM into a truck like that, I think your getting ripped off.

Go with the PCM mileage, someone probably swapped the cluster, the cluster transmits its mileage out to a lot of modules and they will report that mileage as where the PCM will keep its own mileage.

Can you post a pic of the module as detected, maybe the part number will give a clue what could be changed.

For example I bought a truck recently and the cluster part number is a year newer then everything else, that raised a red flag but being I was buying it with a bad engine it wasn’t very relative.

 

 

Can you post a picture of the IPC numbers, your PCM has a build date of 2011, TCM has a build date of 2012, that’s all I can tell you from that picture

 

This is the information I can obtain on all of the modules installed that I can read with Forscan

 

Nothing part number wise is popping out as odd to me, still have a red flag about the PCM mileage, I’m not sure where the engine hours are stored on the 11+ trucks, I know the 08-10 trucks store the engine hours on the cluster, Ford may have moved that to the PCM in 2011.

 

I spoke to my local Ford dealer today and explained my concerns to them. they will read the modules and give me a printout along with their best guess if the PCM was changed or not. The hours on the engine are stored in the PCM and are also available on the odometer readout. Funny thing is they don't come close to agreeing either. the odometer ( information center indicates about 9500 hours with 2500 hours idle time and if I divide that by the miles (69000) i get an average of 7.2 MPH over the life of the vehicle. the PCM indicates total run time of 8721533 seconds which is 2422 hours. that is more realistic if the truck actually has 69000 miles. (average 28.4 MPH over the life of the truck). I'll have a better understanding after i speak to ford tomorrow

 

So I have a suspicion that your truck was used for hot-shotting lighter RVs. It's more common for these to be duallies but an F250 will do the job if you're just pulling travel trailers.

Several years back, dealers near me started having an issue that trucks were coming in with low miles on the dash, but the PCM was showing very high hours/mileage. Turns out what was happening was these RV delivery guys were essentially pulling the instrument clusters out of their trucks once they got outside of warranty, driving the snot out of them delivering RVs, then popping the instrument cluster back in after a year or two and trading in a 'low miles' or 'average miles' truck for a new one at a dealer not near where they lived, when that trade in actually had 200+k miles on it. Then some customer comes in, buys a used truck with 'low' miles, has a failure, and they see the wear indicative of a high-miles truck.

It was common enough in my area that dealers started doing what OP has done, they started pulling information from the PCM for HD trucks and not relying solely on the instrument cluster for mileage when someone traded it in.

I bring this up because it is VERY possible that OP's truck has all original components in it, but because some of these parts weren't actually ON the truck for a lot of its life, they wouldn't report the higher mileage that the PCM reports. I'm not saying it IS the issue, just that it's a possibility. Not entirely sure how you'd go about checking, you could see if you could get an OASIS report on it but it's highly unlikely the truck ever saw a dealer until it was traded in, and things like Carfax only reports what's been reported to it.