Hi, I am just wondering if anyone has had this happen to them. I am in the process of selling our campervan that I have had for 9 yrs and have registered it each year from VIC roads with no trouble at all.
About to sell the van to a prospective buyer and he does an online check on the VIN that is engraved on our drawbar and it is showing a completely different van to ours. Ours is a 1982 van and this one online is a 1975 van and also the registration on this other van ends in a different mnth than mine (its still current rego though).
Looking at my transfer papers from our previous owner all them yrs ago , he has filled in the transfer papers with his name , address etc but as my luck would have it, he didnt complete the vin details. Vic Roads in their wisdom accepted the transfer all them years ago without any questions about the VIN.
My question is, has Vic Roads just made a typo all them yrs ago and used our VIN on some other van (which is still showing as registered) and if so , what VIN is being used for our current van that is registered. The prospective buyer will not buy my van until this is sorted (and rightly so) but i now have to wait till Tuesday before i can get any answers about this stuff up due to public holidays. Just curious if anyone else has had this type of problem.
Its generally carelessness down to an new or change of registration at some point. Wrong paperwork signed off, wrong number plate assigned. Was involved with a new car dealer who had registered a large number of vehicles over a few days. Each vin number was assigned a resistration plate. The paperwork containing vin numbers were all given non-matching number plates. The people attaching the plates are suppose the check the paperwork. However and entire fleet of Rental cars got wrong numbers that didnt show up until the first one was traded in some two years later. The all hell broke loose.
We bought a campervan brand new in 1987 and took it straight home. A year later, things were awkward at work, so I could not get away - registration expired. No problem - get it re-registered when I next need it. Next time I went to get it registered, no problems - they just looked at the old rego papers and they knew I was no shyster, so another year's rego was done. However, I noted that the original rego papers showed a different rego number to what was on the drawbar. The salesman who sold us the van gave us the wrong papers! I mentioned this to the RTA, and the lady said "No problems, and changed the chassis number".
About the 4th time, they did a chassis number check, and this time it came up on their computer as a stolen vehicle. Next thing, there was a very large copper standing behind me... I explained how we had this van from new and it was 7(?) years old. Copper asked the RTA lady what the details of the stolen vehicle were. Answer - it was a 1982 White Truck. Copper said "Does this look like a White Truck?", and then turned to me and asked if I could weld another number onto the chassis. I said I could, so he then said that the chassis number of my caravan was no 12345A. RTA lady said "We allocate chassis number" Copper replied "THE CHASSIS NUMBER IS 12345A". So I went home and welded an A onto the end of the number, and all was well with the world. I had to bring the van back to the RTA for her to check the number though... Nowadays, they don't even get off their fat rses to go and see if there is a number. We have to get a Blue Slip, which costs $75 or something like that. But the rego costs have not gone down by $75 or whatever...
Then, to further compound the issue, because NSW charges rego fees based on weight, I looked at the weight as listed in the original registration papers. It was stated as being something like 2200 kg. No way did our little van weigh anything like that, so I stripped the bedding, gas bottle, water and anything else I could remove from the van and took it down to a weighbridge and had it weighed. It came in a 740 kg. So I fronted up again to the RTA (Gee I love this place) and said that I had had the van re-weighed and it was now 750 kg. No problems, the lady just changed the weight details. Now, over the years, I had had a van which had the wrong chassis number, and the wrong weight, and the RTA lady just changed the details - no problem. In reality, it could easily have been a completely new van (which I would have had to pay stamp duty and transfer fees etc on), but they simply changed the details when I asked them. I doubt that I would get away with that stuff now... It was the same van which we had bought 7 or 8 years before, but the details were all changed to protect the innocent...
My Motorhome is built on an imported engine chassis. As such is called an A class.
It has no Vin plate legally. I have an exemption certificate from the Qld Dept Transport.
Gets interesting when I have my yearly Certificate of Inspection check.
Try telling the examiner it has no VIN. One took over an hour looking despite me showing him the exemption certificate.
Another time I bought an old Volvo 1974 .... 264 model Arranged a roadworthy and unfortunately the inspector missed putting the last digit of the engine number on the certificate. Normally just take the paperwork in and all good.
Had to take the car in and have the inspector check the number. The inspector couldn't see the number on the engine block. Too short to get in a position to see the engine block. I had to read it out to her..........................DUH!!!!
the vin that you are paying rego on, will be on all your old rego papers from each year
Here is one for the experts to sort out. I had the ATM on our caravan increased, the fellow who did the modification checked the VIN and told me that the 12 th character in the VIN was incorrect. the 12th character should be a letter and not a number. He cross checked it on a program from Qld Transport.
He put the "corrected" vin on the document for me to take to Qld transport.
Qld Transport rejected this , so I had to go back to have a new modification plate and the "original VIN" from the fellow who did the modification.
Qld transport then approved the modification.
That was a few years ago and the same VIN appears on the rego renewal every year.
Hi Paul, the VIN is not located on any of the old rego papers at all. I have all of the VIC rego papers from 2011 and not one has the vin printed on it.
Hi Paul, the VIN is not located on any of the old rego papers at all. I have all of the VIC rego papers from 2011 and not one has the vin printed on it.
The Vin number has 17 digits and is always, as is legally required, stamped on the compliance plate. Vin numbers were only introduced in late 1988 so any numbers prior to that would probably be the chassis number often stamped on the drawbar and usually a four or five digit number.
Pre 1988 there was no reference system like PPSR or REVS to check numbers on vans or vehicles. Consequently any information you are getting may not be all that accurate. I would simply take the number on the rego certificate which will probably be a four or five digit chassis number or alternatively use the number stamped on the drawbar.
-- Edited by montie on Tuesday 3rd of April 2018 06:19:31 AM
I have, over the years, taken two cars to be re-registered and found the VIN was incorrectly shown on the original registration paperwork. In NSW. The local blue slip inspector said he found that commonly and did one a month probably. Now that is going back a few years now.
Here in NSW they will not accept any paperwork from the other states without a blue slip check on the numbers, so how bad does that make their systems. In NSW the definitive answer is to have the identity inspection done at a blue slip station and submit that to the registry and get it correct. At your cost of course.
As Montie says VIN numbers are newish and what were chassie numbers are now commonly called VIN as the computer programs only give that as an entry. Not certain about caravan numbers but would assume that a lot would be poorly done in previous years.
Outcome from Vic Roads was you do not need to do anything with the VIN due to the age of the caravan.
There was no requirement to have the VIN unless the caravan runs out of rego and then it will need a compliance plate (new) which will have a new VIN before it can be re registered.
The short answer is don't let it run out of rego and u don't need to do anything.
Hi, I am just wondering if anyone has had this happen to them. I am in the process of selling our campervan that I have had for 9 yrs and have registered it each year from VIC roads with no trouble at all.
Thanks
No not same but sot of.
Earlier this year had friends over for dinner, we both own dual cabs, he said to me "you get 200kgs more than me with your ute", I repied what do you get and he said "2810kgs and you get 3005kgs". Well did that send the sparks flying, me asking where you get that sort of info, my rego papers read 2810kgs gvm. Anyway the next night I was on the computer looking around and there in car specs it reads for my particular model 3005kgs gvm.
After making a couple of phone calls, one to Nissan and the other to the dealer where we had purchased the car from 3 years ago, 20 minute later on Qld gov site my rego paper now reads 3005kgs and a higher drive axle weight allowance. The other good part is we now have 6000 gross combination weight. The ute with the van on gets up there with weight, we travel around the 5500gcm mark.
It was an interesting exercise, surprisingly without pain getting it sorted and with apology from the dealer.
Outcome from Vic Roads was you do not need to do anything with the VIN due to the age of the caravan.
There was no requirement to have the VIN unless the caravan runs out of rego and then it will need a compliance plate (new) which will have a new VIN before it can be re registered.
The short answer is don't let it run out of rego and u don't need to do anything.
Thanks everyone for your advice and stories.
Thanks for letting us all know what the final outcome was, molly chick
I was travelling around in what I thought was a 1984 Viscount caravan
I came across a man in a free camp in QLD, who informed me that it was a 1976 or thereabouts model He knew, as he was on the assembly line making them
He explained that until 1984 or thereabouts, there were no compliant plates
Anyone reregistering an old caravan after that year, just said that it was a 1984 build, and that what was on my rego papers
