I recently bought a 2000 Honda Accord with 126,583 miles on it, or at least, I thought that that was the true mileage. I’ve had it a week and I noticed that the odometer “counts up/on” like it should, except after it reaches 126,599 while driving, it resets itself back to 126,583. This “reset” has occurred several times. The speedometer works perfectly. However, regardless of whichever trip I’m on (Trip A or Trip B), the miles for that trip resets 17 miles too (at the same time that the digital odometer jumps back from 126,599 to 126,583. The battery was 6 years old, so I bought a new one today (I read somewhere that it might have to do with a bad battery). But I’m not sure what the issue is or how to fix it.

Hello, 

Thank you for writing in. This is a bit of a tricky situation. Replacing the battery is not a bad idea and you are heading in the right direction. The issue could be a faulty sensor that inputs into the odometer, the odometer could have been tampered with, or the odometer needs to be replaced itself. Only further testing of the odometer and the related sensors will be able to give you a definitive answer. As to finding out how many mile are actually on the vehicle, you may want to look up the various reports available online for the vehicle using the VIN. This can at least give you some perspective as to when the vehicle hit a certain number of miles. Good luck!