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Documentation and VIN plates


zhap135

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35 minutes ago, agent_zed said:

I made my vin up when i did SVA a long time ago. Wasn't questioned by sva or dvla. I guess it depends on which way the wind is blowing though as DVLA aren't always consistent. I like it as it is details personal to me including the year i started and the year i finished. Very few people can say they have a personalised vin number :)

As for areas they might ask for photos for... I was asked to show evidence of anti-crush tubes in the top suspension mount that slides into the roll bar at the rear. I had to weld in a tube that the bolt then goes through so doing up the bolt won't deform the tubes. 

Interesting point as personalised, I know exactly what I'd  put in there - did they not question that at all?

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Back in the old days all kit car VINs were assigned by the DVLA and began "SABTVA". I say this because I had 3 kit cars in the 90's and they all followed this format - except one of the cars, which was misread by whoever entered it into the computer, so I had a GTM with "SABTVR" instead X-D

I think the take-away here is that the two departments in the DVLA/DVSA/whatever don't really talk or act in any connected way, so whoever issues/comes up with VINs is separate to whoever accepts the paperwork you send them, and provided when the VIN is entered into their system it doesn't already exist, no-one in the DVLA really cares.

There is a formal process, as I've mentioned on the forums before, for requesting a chassis number and it is simple and it works - they send me one in the space of a few weeks... but a lot of people prefer to just make up their own. Personally, I'm a stickler for process, but hey ho - each to their own :)

 

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3 hours ago, zhap135 said:

Interesting point as personalised, I know exactly what I'd  put in there - did they not question that at all?

Wasn't questioned at all. This was in 2007 though.

Mine is along the lines of (obviously just example as not posting real vin numbers online)

ABC2397X2002X2008

The 'ABC' being my initials, 2 (day) 3(month) 97(year) of DOB, 2002 being the start date of build, 2008 being the finish of build. The X's were just to separate the sections and make up the 17digits required

 

:)

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I emailed the DVLA to ask what the process was and got a lengthy email explaining it really well. A week later, I got a letter with my VIN number (which I hadn't even asked for) 😮

You can just specify anything you want - to bore you with maths, there are 34^17 (assuming no letters I and O) possible combinations of numbers, which is about 100 million, million, million, million (1 followed by 26 zeroes)! That means every person on the planet could have 15,000 million million unique VIN numbers each 😮

So not much chance of getting a duplicate 😉 - unless we all do the same year thing as Agent_zed did, I suppose...

(I LOVE stats 😄)

Edited by nelmo
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With hindsight, wish I had chosen my own - could have had 'NEILSCOOLKITCAR01'  😄

or: DAMNTHISCARISFAST'  🤣

This could go on for days - why is this not a thing in our world? Let's start a campaign for more interesting VIN numbers...

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I took the "uninteresting" VIN route, trying to follow the ISO standard as much as I could (as I understood it at the time, anyway!):

The first 3 digits give indication of where the vehicle was made; UK vehicles start with "S", so I chose "S". The 3rd digit should be "9" if the manufacturer makes fewer than 500/year, so mines a "9".

Digits 4 through to 9 indicate some general details of the vehicle type, so mine is "RH2B" with 2 other digits I chose but can't remember why (possibly something to do with the gearbox) 🤔

Digits 10 to 17 indicate clear identification of the vehicle, so I followed the old Ford method of using the engine number. The 10th digit represented the vehicle model year, so I used the date the bare kit left the Robin Hood site.

It was accepted by DVLA so I was happy 🙂

 

Edited by RedTrev
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The VIN on my Exmo was allocated a long time ago, I had no choice then along the lines of what Brumster says above. I paid a local garage to stamp the VIN in the driver's side floor and on a piece of SS that I then cut into a tab to rivet near the battery. They made a slight cockup, one of the digits (a 3) was punched upside down. They did it on the floor first, so also repeated the mistake on the tab for consistency. This odd VIN has caused a few smiles but no complaint from the SVA tester or the MOT testers over the years. So if you add the possibility of upside down characters into the Nelmo stats you probably get more possibilities than atoms in the universe ? ... no wait a minute that can't be right as the univers is infinite ... or is it? 🙂

 

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