Odometer is also called as odograph that is basically an instrument used in vehicles to indicate the actual distance a vehicle has traveled. Odometers can be found used in bicycles or automobiles. It can run on mechanical, electronic or combination of both. These days, you will find more of electronic or combination used in odometers due to the growing trends and advanced appearance. The only role of odometer is to track the distance of automobile, truck or any other vehicle and display in the dashboard for driver’s knowledge.
Odometer can be found positioned at the base of the handlebar where dashboard is found or right at the top of gas tank. An odometer can even be digital or mechanical; these days digital era scores more. A mechanical odometer is designed with numerous cogs including numbers inscribed on each edge. When the vehicle is put to throttle, the cogs start moving with the wheel rotation. The wheels have to be connected to the cogs so as to detect the exact distance that particular vehicle has travelled. A normal mechanical odometer can have maximum 99,999 miles count once this number is achieved, the vehicle again starts with 00000 miles.
When it comes to modern electronic or else the digital odometer, the instrument tracks mileage with the help of a computer chip used in the vehicle. The instrument includes a readout that is digitally displayed on the odometer and the mileage is saved by default. So, when the vehicle is again driver, the odometer continues the mileage further from the last updated numbers. The numbers are stored in main engine control module. As far as manufacturers are concerned, as per them the electronic odometer can even be edited as fraudulent odometer. However, this is not the case. Preventing the numbers to cross much is normal and wrong because resale value of the vehicle is based on that. The less the mileage covered by the vehicle, the more the resale value would be achieved. The clocks can be manually set and is an easy task.
The auto-industry tries to alleviate the fraudulent cases of digital or electronic odometer by bringing some tight securities that does not allow people to tweak with the odometer manually.