How do i find out my previous owner?

[Balr14]

I got previous owner info from the title they signed, when I bought cars out of state and had them delivered. Normally, I don't care but there were two cars I bought that really had my interest.

One was a Lexus I bought with low miles (25k) that had some unusual scrapes on the inside edge of the door and the buttons on the radio and some other controls showed extreme wear for 25k miles. I got in touch with the previous owner who was a doctor who lived in the Chicago area and spent over two hours a day in traffic, so she played with the radio a lot. The scrapes on the door edge were from her purse strap.

The other was a Porsche 997.2 that had an expensive CF intake and CAI. The local dealer said the exhaust had been upgraded, too. They also said the car ran really strong for that model. I found out the car was owned by a guy who owned a Porsche speed shop in California and this was his personal car for a couple years. It had $9k of mods, which answered a lot of questions. He also sent me the tuner unit so I could get the tune changed for 93 octane. It was tuned for 91. It was fast! The car was rather cheap for that model 911, but the mods explained it. Porsche buyers don't like mods.

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[KingKona]

Well i know the previous owner on my second mustang reverted everything back to stock and the cars timing chain shit on me a year after owning it.

Reverted from what? What happened with your last car doesn't apply to this car.

...when i start my car in the morning in quiet mode. It goes back and forth between quiet and normal mode. (It sounds loud as shit and then quiet back and forth every 3 seconds... to the point to where i just keep it in normal lol) I wake up at 1am every morning for work and with the corsa front to back besides headers i would like to figure out how i could stop it from doing that for my neighbors sake lol.

If the car has Corsa Extremes, it does not have active exhaust. There is no Quiet, Normal, Sport or Track modes.

 

[Qcman17]

I wake up at 1am every morning for work and with the corsa front to back besides headers i would like to figure out how i could stop it from doing that for my neighbors sake lol.

Just curious what you meant by this does the car have headers on it currently as well?

 

[black22gt]

Not sure about IL, but i know Texas list the previous owner on the title. Due to fraud, we had to contact the last owner of the last car my wife bought and did so after doing some digging to convert the name and address into a phone number. That guy was cool, and was very understanding considering the person we bought the car from was not the person on the title, and we had to have the title filled out correctly in order to get it on our name proper.

 

[BLUCIFR]

Reverted from what? What happened with your last car doesn't apply to this car.



If the car has Corsa Extremes, it does not have active exhaust. There is no Quiet, Normal, Sport or Track modes.

I have the corsa extremes with active exhausts

 

[BLUCIFR]

Just curious what you meant by this does the car have headers on it currently as well?

Just have corsa xpipe and corsa extremes Active exhaust quad tips

 

[Canuckican]

Hey guys, not too long ago i purchased my 3rd mustang. I got the car, a 2019 GT Premium, used at Carmax. The car was delivered from Illinois and transported all the way to my local carmax in southern Louisiana. Upon arrival inspection i noticed that the car was equipped with corsa extremes and a corsa x-pipe. Ive been eager to find out who the previous owner was to ask a few questions to. Is there anyway to find out who the previous owner was for this vehicle? Ive tried googling and searching the Vin on a few websites. But nothing really came through. If anybody knows a way to this please enlighten me, thanks!

I had a similar thing with my 2016 GT, purchased in Florida and delivered to Wisconsin. Some things on it did not make sense to me and I was hoping to talk to the previous owner to know what was changes/upgrades had been done to it. It stopped running after I filled the gas tank for the first time only to find out it most likely had an E85 tune nobody told me about, nor did it come with the tuner.

Searching by the VIN turned up nothing helpful. I contacted a few tuners and they did not see the VIN in their systems to at least give me a hint about the tune. I certainly appreciated they at least tried!

I knew the dealership where the previous owner traded in the Mustang so I contacted this dealer asking for a bit of help. I told them I had a question about the car, said I would give them the VIN and asked them if they could call the previous owner and pass along my contact information and the question about the E85 tune and either contact me or tell the dealer if it had an E85 tune in it. I did not ask them to tell me anything about the previous owner. It would be 100 percent up to the previous owner to decide if he'd reply or not. I don't care who he is, just if a tune was in use and what one it was. But, the dealership told me to pi$$ off, that they can't do that. What they meant was there was no $$$$ in it for them for the 2 minute call. Oh well, it was worth a try.

I've now had this car almost 2 weeks and it is still not running. With any luck at all, it will be by the end of the week.

I hope you're tearing up the streets and having a blast with your new ride! Congrats!

 

[Johnny Rockit]

I am willing to bet when someone trades in or sells a tuned vehicle the buyer gets the device in most cases. Then disappears until it shows up for sale on ebay etc.

 

[ORRadtech]

So, not to hijack the thread but...
Is there any definitive way to tell if there's an aftermarket tune on a car?
I've read that if you look at, I think, the AFR you can tell if it's E85 tuned.
But is there a way to tell for sure that there is, or isn't, say a 93 or something other than stock tune?

 

[Cobra Jet]

Years ago I bought a 1992 Mustang GT from a dealer; was showing as only 2nd owner once I had it titled. Back then, I had really good contacts at a local Ford Dealer (who have since retired). They ran me an OASIS. Back then (25 yrs ago), the OASIS showed the prior owner had the car registered under their personal business name...

I'm not sure if an OASIS today will or does show prior owner history under any warranty repair history.

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In some States, you can request such info under their public records act where you can request copies of accident reports and/or titles. Whether they redact people's names is beyond me, but that is an option found on some State's DMV websites for requesting info and there is usually a fee. Also even if the chance exists, you could be denied the request based on their XYZ reasoning - just because they have it, doesn't mean they will release it.

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My 94 Cobra, when I bought it, I found in the trunk under the spare tire a Good Year invoice (for replacement GS-C's) that contained the prior owner's name/address. Back then (over 19 years ago) I wasn't thinking anything of it and there wasn't full fledged "internet", or mobile devices or social media platforms like there are today... So I just put it with my Mustang paperwork and forgot about it. I recently came across it in the last 2 years going through old storage totes. Looked up the name online, found there was a law firm named after him and sent an email through their "contact us" link basically saying "Hey, if X is still at the firm, I'd like to know if he was the owner of a 94 Mustang Cobra. If he was can you please have him contact me.".

I didn't know if I had the right person or not and wasn't even expecting an answer. However I DID get a response and it was from the prior owner! He had just recently moved from NJ out to AZ. He confirmed ownership and told me all about when he found/bought the car brand new. He also told me he traded it in on a then brand new leftover 2003 TBird. Come to found out, when I bought the car, it was only 1 month after he let go of it. The info he gave me was really cool - and it also confirmed what I already knew - I'm only the 2nd owner of the car, he was the first. He also snail mailed me the original work order written up at the dealer for the car, which was cool. So I have our entire convo in emails telling me all about the car when he owned it, plus his info that validates him as the same owner based on that Good Year invoice from long ago. Which to me is substantial, only because my Cobra Coupe is SVT Cert #13 built out of the 5,009 coupes in 1994. Having that type of contact info, verification of first ownership, and back up documentation is very rare... especially on a vehicle that is now 29 years old, where I've owned it 19 yrs out of that 29 and was able to just recently getting the prior owner info.

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So it can be possible to track backwards for vehicle ownership IF using available resources and by asking questions... You just never know what info you may get back from asking around or while searching deeper and deeper on the web, which is a powerful tool.

 

[Johnny Rockit]

So, not to hijack the thread but...
Is there any definitive way to tell if there's an aftermarket tune on a car?
I've read that if you look at, I think, the AFR you can tell if it's E85 tuned.
But is there a way to tell for sure that there is, or isn't, say a 93 or something other than stock tune?

We were always told in shop that 14:1 is the optimum AFR. This was before computers took over. Not sure how it translates to current tunes.

 

[KingKona]

...is there a way to tell for sure that there is, or isn't, say a 93 or something other than stock tune?

Yes. You will destroy the engine with knock/detination if you run it on lower octane rating gas than it's tuned for.

 

[Dinokill3.7]

When I bought my 2017 PP with 18k mile in 2021 it had 3 previous owners but haven’t had any issues with the car other than water leak in the third brake light and on the roof which I was able to fix myself fairly easy.

You see it all the time on Facebook. People selling their cars after a few thousand miles because they want to move onto other “projects”, they got bored or like to waste money down the toilet.

 

[ORRadtech]

Yes. You will destroy the engine with knock/detination if you run it on lower octane rating gas than it's tuned for.

Well, yes, I suppose.
But you're not really answering the question I posed. So you're either being intentionally obtuse or I was unclear with my question.
In an attempt to clarify; Is there any reliable way to find out if a used car, that didn't come with a tuning device, has an aftermarket tune of any sort without causing damage to the engine? Anything you could see using a scan tool, Forscan, visual inspection, anything?

 

[KingKona]

Anything you could see using a scan tool, Forscan, visual inspection, anything?

Being serious, no there isn't. But it's just a few hundred dollars for a dealership to flash your car back to stock.

And if you just bought the car, I'd ask the dealership to go ahead and do that as part of the sale.

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