I was reading about odometer rollbacks on Canadian import cars and I thought of this.

Our cars have a digital odometer, so what is to prevent the mileage from being lost if the car loses power? With the analog ones there's a physical mechanism, so when the power is out it wont change unless someone moves it.

I'm guessing the battery sustains it when the engine's off, and maybe a secondary small battery when the main battery's out. But what's to stop this one from going out, even those computer motherboard batteries wear out eventually. Will we just have to have the dealer install a new one and enter new mileage?

 

Man we sure do have a lot a Weed heads in this club.


JUST JOKING. DON'T KILL ME. But you are doing some real deep thinking. I've never thought of that. That's pretty interesting. I wonder.

 

I'm thinking theres battery backups and then some type of flash memory that's been mentioned before. Just a guess.

 

no.. the thing is useing non volitile memory (same as memory sitcks from sony) they will last like 1000 years or somethign before loseing data

 

sorry i ment same concept as the sony memory stick.. its not actually a Sony module in there..

 

Heh, when you're watching a robot pick up a few thousand bacterial colonies for a few hours your mind starts to wander.

Good to hear there's some protection against having it erased.

 

from what i heard, it burns it into the ecu as well so dealerships can check and see if the milage has been tampered with.

 

a dealership can reprogram a odometer but it will show that it has been reprogrammed

 

Correct. A flash type of memory is used. Basically EEPROM. There's really no way for a backyard mechanic (or most mechanics for that matter) to change the reading.

 

i belive we prefer to becalled Potheads