1999 Ford Mustang cluster/smog

AFIEND2

MEMBER
1999 FORD MUSTANG
V6
2WD
AUTOMATIC
115,000 MILES

I bought the car yesterday. The guy seem to be up front. He had a rebuilt engine put in. And in doing so the odometer said a different mileage than what was printed on the title. So he took it out. He bought another cluster but did not install it. Ok so we figured no problem. We'll I went to smog it today and it failed. They told me the car was in the pass 90 days slogged tested and failed. He said that he could not get a reading. I don't know what to do. Or what is wrong.

1 Reply

CARADIODOC

MECHANIC
33,873 POSTS

You got some misinformation somewhere. Changing the engine has nothing to do with the mileage on the odometer.

The mileage on the title is going to be the mileage when the last person bought the car. It is going to have higher mileage now. If it has lower mileage, someone already replaced the cluster. All you said is it's different. You didn't say if it's higher or lower.

Instrument clusters aren't that hard to replace. If the previous owner went through the trouble of removing it and getting a different one, he would have installed it in a few minutes before trying to sell the car. To not do so suggests pretty strongly he knew there was some other problem, and he made up an excuse why he didn't fix it.

The failure to pass emissions testing doesn't have anything to do with the mileage or the instrument cluster. They have to tell you the reason the emissions are higher than allowed so your mechanic knows what to look for.