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.
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Monday, February 17th, 2014 AT 7:28 PM