Just FYI, the interior plastic is same on all the 93-95 models. What covers the plastic is what's different. The 94-95 have a textured coating which doesn't chip like the '93 coating.

 

You can't tell mileage by the ****. Some people leave their hand on the **** all the time. I met a guy last night that was an original owner of a 93 R1. His car had just over 60k, and was in excellent condition. His shift **** was much worse than the one in the pic, but everything else was sweet.

 

Swapping the clusters out with these cars wont do anything, the same miles will show on the replaced cluster. It doesn't matter what you do since its digital. It has a memory somewhere in the car, that records the miles, if it's messed with it will set off an alarm or something like that. So If it's on the speedometer most likely its accurate.

 

Just because it's digital does not mean it's tamper proof. Not that I would, but give me a shop manual and a couple hours with a donor, lower mileage, "car-b-que" and I could have the high mile car reading lower. MKIV's are digital and have been tampered. Same with some of the third gen F-body's. Mileage is not stored in the ECU, if that's what you were thinking.

Ryan

 

That certainly settles it, right there. I'll have to poke around and see what the owner says. I just hate to have to hop a flight to just be disappointed.

Ryan

 

Thanks for the clarification

Ryan

 

I'd say the car has "a lot" of miles on it from the pic, but hard to say.

On a related note, do NOT use Simple Green to clean leather interiors. In another car (fortunately) I wiped down the shift **** and steering wheel with Simple Green and it completely stripped the finish from the leather. It ended up looking like this shift **** after about 6 months. (fyi, Simple Green is a concentrated universal piney-scented cleaner that works well on just about everything else...)

Moral of the story? It could be a low-mileage car that was routinely detailed with carburetor cleaner or something...

 

Wrong...

Cluster holds the mileage...

 

my shift **** is completely down to the plastic and my car only has 95k on her.

you CANNOT determine miles by wear cause its all based on HOW the person drove the vehicle.

 

yeah the cluster totally holds the mileage. If you remove the cluster you can still even drive the car and it wont record miles. really dumb setup they have

simple green should also never be used for cleaning polished parts

 

When I bought my '93 it had 62K on it with a wear spot down to the plastic. Miles were CARFAX certified. I replaced the **** with OEM from Fritz.

 

its halarious that anyone would try to guess the millage/much less the condition of an engine by looking at the shift ****. This thread should be deleted! If you wanna know how a fd is running, drive it. if you wanna know how good the engine is, compression test it. its really not rocket science and you cant hide very much from a compression test or test ride/drive. use common sence to tell you what is up with a car...

 

Look dude, I think we came to a conclusion. Thinking "This thread should be deleted" is a pretty narrow view of things. I asked a simple question about how the shift ***** in FD's hold up in regards to mileage, obviously the answer in this case is "not related". If you would actually read, instead of writing BS, you would have seen that NO WHERE did I ask about the condition of the engine. That would be foolish. BACK TO SUBJECT, No, we cannot ascertain any sort of correlation between mileage and interior wear. That's NOT the case with every type of vehicle. Certain things in some cars wear with usage ata pretty consistent rate. Be it carpet, shift ****, steering wheel, rubber on the pedals, ETC. Usage=Mileage. When a vehicle is claimed to be 65K and looks like the leather is worn off the shift ****, I was a little suspicious. Other factors have come in to view since then and backed up that mileage claim. Maybe living on an island permits you to "just go drive it" but for me it's either a 16 hour drive or roundtrip airfare. I don't like to waste my time. Obviously you do, based on your post above.

Ryan

 

Agreed.


Now what I'm wondering is if they changed that setup in later year other Mazda cars. I have an '01 Tribute that has a digital ODO, and was curious if the cluster holds the mileage.

 

Still purple

 

Mine is just a LITTLE more worn than yours with 72k