Last year, I set about rebuilding my damaged Rev 3 Turbo into a new shell.
I bought the shell as pretty much a full car from a guy on the OC, with a blown engine. He had been using it daily, and everything seemed normal. I agreed a deala fter looking at photos, sent him the cash and had the car shipped to me. He neglected tot ell me the car had no VIN plate on it.
I was a bit pi$$ed off to say the least, but I dug around, and spoke to two previous owners who both confirmed it wasn't present when they had the car either. The car has had an AA inspection in the past and comes up HPI clear, so I'm happy it's legit etc. and always have been. But it bothers me massively, and I feel like it makes the car pretty worthless.
The really weird part of all this, is that the number on the bulkhead matches the number on the log book, but it isn't the
"sw20-xxxxxxxx" number normally there. It's a new number that has no letters in it and has a funny little Japanese symbol type thing at each end of it. It leads me to thinkt hat it may have been a stolen/recovered back in Japan. Not my problem is this:
I'm looking to break it as it needs stuff done and the vin plate thing makes me feel like I'm just throwing money away if I spend anything else on it.
However it's a good car, mechanically sound with a lot of new bits, and a lot of hard work has gone into it. I don't want to break it if the vin plate thing really isn't a big deal. As I say, the docs all stack up, it has masses of history, I've spoken to previous owners and it has had AA inspections and work done by Toyota in the past. So what do I do??
It's a bit of a head scrambler at the minute.
The rear arches need sorting and it needs new shocks, plus the sills have been repaired and fully replaced, witht he inner strengthening also done. it would be a perfect base for my TRD replica project, in other words. But this vin thing won't stop niggling at me, and has done for a year now.....