Hi all, my friend just bought a 2002 Pickup V6 4x4 TRD crew cab (odometer says 147K miles) and was told by NJ DMV that it shows the truck was once registered in MD at 300K miles. It is a digital odometer. Are miles stored in the ECU or in the cluster? He thinks maybe cluster was replaced, but I would think miles are stores in the ECU?. Thanks

 

It is in the cluster, on the same chip as the inclinometer for the fuel level sensor.

 

It's stored in the cluster. For instance, changing the ECU would not change the displayed mileage because there is no data bus wiring between the gauges and ECU. The VIN is also not coded into the ECU so storing the mileage in memory would serve no purpose even if it did do that.