In order not to become a victim of fraudsters and not to purchase a stolen car or a car that has been in severe accidents, you need to check its VIN number. If you know how to correctly decipher all the characters, then you can get a lot of necessary information about the purchased car.
Instructions
Step 1
To check the vin number, contact a company that specializes in this type of service. You can also use one of the resources on the Internet. Services of this kind will cost around $ 100. It should be understood that currently only two firms have sufficient information to verify the vin number. They are located in the USA and Canada and are called CARFAX and Autocheck, respectively. All other Russian companies interact with them, as a rule, via the Internet. Naturally, not for free. Therefore, if you want to receive reliable and complete information about the car you are interested in, you will also have to pay. You can, of course, use one of the free services, but the information obtained in this way will be incomplete and, possibly, unreliable. Remember the good adage that the miser pays twice.
Step 2
When you start checking the vin number yourself, remember that in all countries some of the provisions for its application are slightly different. First of all, make a visual inspection of the place where the vin number is applied (as a rule, it is applied either to the car body itself, or to a special metal plate that is attached directly to the body). Pay attention to the place where the plate with the car's vin number is attached. Make sure it cannot be removed. Remember that on the car, the vin number is knocked out in several places, and you must find and inspect all of them.
Step 3
Check the numbers themselves and the clarity of their writing. Remember that there is some information hidden in each digit of the vin number. The first character characterizes the country of manufacture of the vehicle. The second symbol reveals the company that produced the car. The third character describes the type of vehicle. The fourth to eighth characters reveal the characteristics of the vehicle, such as body type, model, engine, series. The ninth character contains the check digit of the vin number, which can be used to verify its authenticity. The model year is indicated by the tenth symbol, and the eleventh characterizes the vehicle assembly plant. The twelfth to seventeenth characters indicate the sequence of the vehicle for production, as it passes through the assembly line.
