Odometer validity
 

How difficult is it for someone to change the odometer numbers on a 450 sl ?

I ask because mine reads 38699.0 miles. The condition of the car would lead someone to believe that it has 138699.0 miles, or more. The odometer is working as far as I can tell, but then I have only put a few hundred miles on it since I bought it.

The last piece of paperwork that I have from a repair was from 2002, and it had the mileage listed at about 33000. Is it possible that this could be actual miles, or could it have been adjusted somehow?

During my projects with wood instrument clusters and when the parts were a lot cheaper, I took apart a speedometer. It's very easy to do, and only a little more difficult to do in an undetectable manner (note that I did NOT do this on my cars, don't have to, and don't ask me how).

Check some of the other things that are indicators of use. My 76 has about 66K miles on the odometer. I changed out the headlights recently and one was a non-halogen German sealed beam. I bet those were OEM and don't imagine you could get non-halogens in the last 15-20 years, so I thought that might be a pretty good indicator of little use.

Check pedal rubber, etc., altho pedals are easy to change. Is the spare tire OEM? What tires are on it and can you figure out the date codes?

Get a VMI from MB, which would show when it was brought into the dealer for service, and the mileage. Do you have any earlier service records with mileage? Did MB do the subframe recall work, and what was the mileage when they did it?

Good luck!

While it is certainly possible, it is not very easy to get all the numbers to line up and look like it's never been touched.

mileage
 

Those clusters are very easy to swap out...I have the same situation with a 73-450SL I bought last year. Mileage says 47,500, condition says "it ain't so"

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Thanks for the great responses.

The funny thing is that it was all the service records that came with the car that got me to question the odometer to start with. The last known service was about four years ago and it stated that the mileage was about 5000 less than it has now.

An interesting mystery, but the one known reality is that I own this cool car.

Any way to check mileage at state safety inspections in the last 4 years?

Perhaps its 1,038,699! :D

Illinois doesn't have any safety inspections, just emissions. And those stop after a certain number of years, but I could check for any past checks.

Doesn't the odometer have a 100,000 slot? I can't check right now, But I thought that it does, which is why this seemed funny.

Another possibility is the speedometer was replaced with a new one that started at 0. Looked at a 280CE one time that showed low mileage, but there was sticker on the door jamb saying the speedometer had been replaced at a certain mileage. And yes, it is possible to roll back the odometer on a Mercedes of that vintage given a little time.

Yes, it does, but it doesn't have a 1,000,000 mile one, hence page62's comment.

Another possiblilty is that the odo was temporarily replaced with another odo purchased on Ebay, and then the old one was reinstalled. There's plenty of them kicking around. If dealer replaced the odo, they're supposed to turn it to the existing mileage.

I still think you should try to gauge all the surrounding circumstances.

BTW, does it look like it has the original paint?

I missed the million mile part, that would be funny. I suppose that the odometer could have been replaced, but the paper work that I have follows the mileage in a kind of logical order by the dates.

I believe that most of the paint is original because it is not is too good of shape. The dealer that I bought it from let is sit outside for the better part of a year and it got baked. The seats are in fair shape for a 30 year old car, in fact most of the damage to the interior looks to be from the sun.

The bottom line is that the car will be thoroughly gone over, in time. And I really enjoy owning it. I know that it has some kind of story to tell, I would like to be able to hear it better. I even have a polariod picture of the car sitting in what I believe is the original owner's driveway, looking really good (the car that is).

OD reading
 

Does the OD read 386990? The reason I ask is that there should not be a tenths in the regular OD, the trip OD is the only tenths indicator.

I missed that before, too. Mine is the same. The regular odo doesn't have tenths, just the trip odo.

On of the first things you should do is check with MB whether there are any outstanding recalls. They should honor the recalls, no matter how old.

OD number alignment
 

From past experience on old cars with questionable odometers, the initial alignment to change the numbers is not difficult, and usually not observable in the first 100-1000+ miles. The individual wheels, almost always, start to track unevenly. I don't mean if all your numbers are not in line, your odometer has been tampered with, this is normal for most cars with mechanical clocks. The changes of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. positions become out of linear through many factors, wear and abuse being leading causes.