Quote:
Originally Posted by Rickysnickers
Yes, and those are ILLEGAL!
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You'd think so.
In Arizona where I'm at, Barrett-Jackson lobbied the legislature a couple of years ago to change the Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) to allow vehicles older than 1985 to have the ID/VIN plate removed/restored in the course of a restoration. I imagine they had so many problems at their auctions in Scottsdale that it was worth working to get the law changed (the auctions pump a lot of money into the Arizona economy)
I printed the ARS and took it to the DMV in my podunk little town in northern Arizona, and they were ok with a 'restored' ID plate (of course, these were the same folks that I should just stamp the number on the title somewhere on the frame and call it a day)
Even if I did this, it would likely blow-up an auction when a bidder ran the VIN through a decoder and nothing lined up and a simple google search showed it was the engine's casting number
Quite a few years ago, I drug a car out of somebody's back yard in Apache Junction and restored it. Had a good title. In the process of restoration I took an aluminum VIN tag off the firewall and had it reproduced at an engraving shop and riveted back on - big mistake. When the DMV inspector saw that he went back in the building and returned with a claw-hammer and an old screwdriver and informed me that I'd committed a felony and he was confiscating my VIN tag, and if I gave him any crap he'd have my car confiscated as evidence. After some lengthy conversation, the DMV said if they could verify the VIN on the firewall matched the number stamped in the frame and were convinced I wasn't committing fraud, they'd issue a new state VIN. Surprisingly, they let me keep my homemade engraved VIN tag on the firewall, saying the VIN was now state issued and supersedes anything else on the car.