1986 412 - Odometer in Miles or km?

Good day Alex,

From what I have seen, the majority of time the odometer remained in KMs. Otherwise, the whole assembly would need to be recalibrated in miles and most likely needed to be done by an authorized facility... as most jurisdictions "frown" heavily with any odometer changes/modifications. Leaving the odometer in KMs allowed for a an easy speedo conversion, as then MPH markings would only need to be applied in the appropriate locations.

That said... your car's odometer could have been modified. The easiest way to check is to to drive your car a known distance and see what the odometer reads.

Lastly, when selling the car you can always state TMU (True Mileage Unknown) on your selling documents in order to cover all your bases. Given that these cars are 36+ years old, what the odometer reads is not as important as the car's present condition, maintenance history, etc.

Cheers,

Sam

 

Not sure about the 412. On the earlier cars it was just a sticker applied, buttgis one seems much more orofesdionally updated, also the later cars were fitted with electronic speedos that are easy to calibrate.

If they did their homework, calibration could allow for a 1/1.6 factor...

 

Good day Raemin,

Easy or not in some places it is simply illegal unless the shop doing the change/calibration is registered appropriately.

Cheers,

Sam

 

Not talking whether it is legal or not, but whether they could be fully converted to miles and tweaked. My own speedo is quite optimistic (reads 180kmh when cruising at 150kmh), fixing it requires sophisticated instruments and selecting calibrated springs, whereas my cousin just had to adjust a set-screw.

On the earlier cars, speedo is cable operated, whereas on the 412, there is a sensor that is bolted to the gearbox instead of the usual cable angle drive, this sensor then feeds pulses to the speedo.

These types of speedos could have been adapted to miles much more thouroughly than the earlier ones. Hence my remark: on an earlier speedo, no doubt it would be a miles sticker, but still km odometer, whereas on these modern ones a comprehensive mile conversion could have been performed.

In any-case that's easy to check on a short trip...

 

That speedo looks like an actual Ferrari mph speedo (like for the UK market) vs a sticker over the km/h speedo.

I'd say it's miles.