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IS there any way, commercially, to find out how much warranty work has been done to a car?

CarFax? Etc.

I am asking since a few cars are bought back by the manufacturers, without being "lemon lawed".

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I've seen the Ford and GM dealer pull up the entire service history on their systems using the vin. Of course, you need a cooperative fellow in the service dept to let you do this, but it can be done.

Car fax, as I recall reading here, is stuff reported to the state. That would be lemon law buybacks, I think, but mostly smog checks and accidents.

Smog checks at least tell the tale of mileage.

 

I would think that if the car is a Ford any Ford dealer could tell you. I believe things like warranty work go into a central computer system that any dealer can access. Now for how far back this info is kept I have no idea, and when the dealers started this computer tracking must of been in the 90s`, maybe sooner I'm not sure. If I remember correct I was talking to a service advisor about my wife's 04 Chevy and he said that things like services are kept by the dealer that did the work, that doesn't go into a central system.

 

Thanks...

 

Any Ford service depatment SHOULD be able to pull the information up using the VIN. For warranty purposes that has to be avaible for them before they begin diagnostics (they aren't going to do warranty work on a car that has 25,000 miles on it when just two months ago the same car had 35,900 miles on it).

Getting them to actually do it can be a pain. My sister purchased a 94 Couger that had the speedometer replaced - dealer claimed it was done at 25,000 miles, car was currently showing 11,000 miles and the big "THIS CAR IS EQUIPPED WITH A REPLACEMENT SPEEDOMETER" sticker. Dealer flat refused to provide her with a printout of previous service work (unwilling to verify it had been done at 25K).

Back in 1998 I bought a 1992 Grand Marquis and they had no problem printing out all the service work done on the car since day one. Did encounter one problem just a year ago - the engine had been replaced under warranty and listed the serial number for a "new" (1995) engine. Turned out they had actually installed a used engine with a manufacturing code showing it was built early in 1991. Dealer sold the new warranty replacement engine to somebody else. Eight years later they told me to "prove" I hadn't replaced the engine since I had owned it.