I recently purchased a 1997 F-250 HD from a reputable dealer. The odometer read 28,001 when I drove it home. However, the odometer keeps resetting to 28,037 after restarting the engine. Does anybody have any idea what the problem can be. It was previously a federal government vehicle.

 

28,000 miles on an eight year old vehicle is pretty darn low, especially being a Gov't vehicle. There is an IC chip that drives and 'counts' for the odometer display. It is most likely at fault. Easiest way to overcome this is to get another speedometer/odometer set from the scrap yard and have a Ford dealer reset the odometer to what you feel the actual mileage may be. The true mileage might be the million dollar question here. Good Luck.

 

I'm thinking that may be my best bet. Thanks for the help.

 

I've never seen a fed vehicle not have racked up the miles. I wonder if your local DMV might be able to shed some light on the true mileage.

 

We have some vehicles on the base I am a Reservist at that are 15 years old and have less than 50k miles. But, mileage certainly isn't a good indication of how much wear and tear it saw. Some of them may have idled for hours a day or driven at at low speed with very few miles put on it. The vehicle might have only gone 28k but the engine could have the equivalent of much more. then again, there is no telling how long the odometer has been doing the loop thing.

I doubt the DMV would be much help since the vehicle was probably never registered with a state plate.

Good luck.

 

Hey folks,
Well we currently have Dodge and Chevys at the goverment site I work at :they see no mileage. We use them around the site for short trips and very seldom offsite for hardware Etc . So the low mileage could be true

 

A little info on government vehicles. There are basically two types of government vehicles, government owned and government leased.

First the government owned, the Army, Navy Marine Corp and Air Force own most of there vehicles, these vehicles are pretty easy to identify. first the usually painted in some drab color, don't have any kind of standard license plate, usually a peice of plate steel with vinyl letters with is the vehicle i.d. number or it has a stencelled number on it. This vehicles are maintained by military personal and are pretty much in use till they fall apart. these vehicles are pretty much low milage due to them not being licence for public hwys if you do see them off base there usually in convoys.

The second is leased vehicles, the are know as GSA (Government Service Administration) these are easily Identified by a GSA license plate, a number like G63 on a angle followed by a 6 digit number and U.S. government on the plate. The G number (G63) is a class I.D. G63 being a passanger vehicle if I remember correctly. GSA leases these vehicles to every and any government agency from the Presidents lemo to the CIA, Coast Guard, Park Service you name. The armed services using GSA vehicles also for there high turn over vehicles in other words if there driven over 8K a year it's usually a GSA vehicle,

The GSA vehicles are some of the best maintained vehicles in the country, they are treated the same as most of your rent a car companies, there are monthly, quarterly and anual report on them that are required, and they are usually sold to the public bewtween 80K to 100K miles so they still have a good value when sold.

If you want a idea of your vehicle milage you can probably contact you area GSA with your vin number and they could tell you the milage on the vehicle at time of sell.

On a final note, GSA is one of our govenment biggest agencies, they handle 90% of what our government buy or contracts from office supplies to fire trucks and everything in between.

For more info ckeck out GSA on the web, just search for GSA. gov