Aaaaalrighty then. SO. I just moved from CT to CO and had my vehicle shipped out here and it got here last night. One issue that I discovered is that my odometer is missing 116 miles that were on it when it left CT... I have a picture that has the odometer in it and its unmistakably 218,831 but when it arrived three days later my odometer was 218,715...

I am so utterly confused on how the heck that could have happened... I mean I highly doubt they still had problems with odometers running backwards in the 80's right?... And even if that was the case my truck was up on a car carrier for 99.998% of its journey... Someone please return my sanity?

Did you ask the shipping company about it? Thats where I would start.

I did and they were just as confused as I was

As far as I know (and that's not a lot), the only way to push the odometer back is to remove it from the back of the cluster and physically pop the number wheels into new positions.

If you have solid evidence of the discrepancy and you're sure you're on firm ground, I would not accept "gosh we don't know" from the shipping company. You and the shipper should both have signed documents indicating the mileage on the truck at each end of the journey... right?

Unfortunately, no I actually left CT before a driver could be locked on for the transport. The best evidence I have are a picture with a Timestamp before and after transport... But that would never hold up as useable as the vehicle was in my possession for many many hours before I noticed and took a picture... Plus why the heck would they even do that? Its not exactly a quick and easy job to crank those things in any way... I wonder if maybe the plastic number retaining clips are broken off in the odometer drum allowing it to slip... Even that is unlikely though as theyre not easy to turn even with the rod and retainers off... Oyyy... Im going to dismantle my cluster tomorrow and see if I can tell what the hell is going with it... It makes my brain hurt thinking about how that could do that on its own

It went through a time warp on the way from CT to CO.
It makes everything a little younger.

Or you hired Dr Who to transport it for you.

Lets see the pichers!

I am going to go ahead and throw in a very possible "what if".

What if the vibration from the vehicle being on a trailer for a long period of time wiggled the last few numbers on the odo a little and that's just where they rested? I have taken the odo's apart on the 1st gens and they are anything but solid. I moved my odo back to 0's after I rebuilt my engine because my title said odo was exempt so I wasn't commiting fraud or anything. The last few numbers on the odo are the ones that get the most wear and tear since they move the most. The whole odo works on a spiral gear that moves off of the speedo gears.

This would be my guess as to what happened. I really doubt that a shipping company decided to take an old toyota for a joy ride and move the odo back. It's not an easy job to do and if you don't do it right you can destroy the speedo assembly and the odo assembly.

Its because your in a different time zone now.

It's because of the altitude.

I wouldn't do this. Why go through the effort, with the risk of screwing it up, for the sake of a few miles on a high mileage? I would continue to drive it as normal while tracking the mileage (say at fill-ups) to see how the odometer behaves going forward.

Did it have the same amount of gas in the tank or was it noticably used up?

I'm with SV_Dude on the possibility of vibration.

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I like SV_Dude's scenario. That sounds like it could very easily be the case after getting carted around for 2300+ miles. The wind alone was high enough to rattle my CB antenna against the rear quarter panel so much that it not only removed the paint but it even gouged into the metal a little bit >_< Shame on me for not protecting it.

I do track my mileage at every fillup as I like to calculate my fuel economy. I keep it in a Google Spreadsheet which I made a form for on my phone. Whenever I fill up I put my milage, gas station im using, octane, and gallons and then hit the Submit button and it drops that info into my spreadsheet and automatically calculates my distance travelled and my fuel economy since the last fill up. I have fuel economy data all the way back to 2007 :P Ive been getting between 18 and 20 MPG for quite a while!

Regarding the fuel tank level, the fuel was at a level that was definitely reasonable. I had maybe a quarter tank in there when I left CT and since then it had been started and run 2 or 3 times for a little while over the course of about a week.

As for the Doctor, I doubt he was the driver because I dont remember seeing him change ethnic backgrounds, grow a difficult to understand accent, and let himself gain a few pounds ;)

As for the time zone, I accounted for any time dilation by putting a gamma ray emitter in the back on low power pulses to create it's own SpaceTime Continuum bubble.

As for altitude: Crap! That could be it! :P

I guess the only thing I can do is be conscious of the possibility that my odo can slip at times. Now I just gotta drive a little extra to get to the 250k club :P Thanks again for the suggestion! That will help me sleep at night(Or least be one less reason I cant)!