is there anyway to find out the true mileage of the car?

 

Is it really broken? Or did it stop working, along with your speedometer? If both quit working, chances are your VSS (vehicle speed sensor) took a dump. Is your Check engine light on?

replace this sensor, and the speedo and odometer will start working again. And the check engine light will go off.

 

im not sure.. im looking at a 97 accord and the odometer is broke and miles have stoped at 13,000... so no telling how many miles.. could be 50,000 could be 250,000... i was just wondering if there was a way to check the real mileage on the car.. and the price could be very good or very bad.. hes asking 4k.. its a local small dealer. i asked him to run a carfax and let me know the last how long the last owner has had the car (as in how long did he own it ) not floating around dealers/auctions.. but any way i was just wondering thanks..

 

Walk away from the car.

That's essentially odometer fraud

 

Yes, with it stopped at 13,000 miles, thats MAD low.. Yes, that is odometer fraud. A compression test and a leakdown test could tell you the condition of the engine though, but if it has crazy high mileage, you could have lots of other problems. Just walk away. $4k is kinda high for not knowing the mileage.

There are other ways to tell the usage the car got. You could look on wear on the seats, the arm rests, the driver mats in the car and stuff like that. Look if writings are rubbing off the buttons, like the turn signals and the wipers to tell if they were used a lot. All of this does not guarantee anything, but it gives you an idea if they are really straight up BSing you. It would have absolutely no resale value either. Just walk away. $1k-1.5k might be okay for a car like this.