Decoding and Understanding Vehicle Identification Numbers / VIN's

Hi, I’m Jeremy Nutt from 1A Auto, and I’m here to teach you about “knowing your VIN’s”. It sounds pretty exciting right? That’s because it is. Because before 1981, there no standardization of VIN’s on cars. Before that, it could have been 10 digits, it could have been 5 digits, it could have been whatever the car manufacturer wanted. So, in 1981, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration put their foot down and they said “It’s going to be 17 digits from now on” and they made all of the car manufacturers run with it. That meant that each number within the VIN meant something specific about that car. Whether it was their number in the production line, or their color, or trim or the engine size, or the year, it all meant something, except for one of those digits, but we’ll get into that later. The letters I, O, and Q were never used in VIN numbers, from 1981 until today, and going forward. That’s because they get easily confused with the numbers one, and zero. For the tenth digit of the VIN number, they never used the letters U, or Z. Why? I’m not really sure, but, that’s what they ran with. The first 3 digits of the VIN are known as the WMI, which is “World Manufacturer Identifier” and that is the country of origin the manufacturer and division from that manufacturer. So, in this case, the one means United States, if it was J, it would mean Japan, and if it was four, it would mean it was Canada. So this is the country that the vehicle was made. The second digit is the manufacturer that made the vehicle. In this case General Motors has many different divisions. They have Chevy, they have Buick, and they have Oldsmobile, and they have several others. This would be General Motors hat I guess you would call it. Where division which is the third digit, is the more specific Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile or whatever it is. In this case we have United States, General Motors, and Chevy, in this case. The fourth through the eighth, right here is called the attributes of the VIN. And those include things like safety, engine sizes, which series the vehicle is. So in this case the fourth digit is safety, braking and suspension. So if you have a heavy duty truck with like eight lug wheels. Something serious, a towing package that sort of thing. This is the digit that will tell you “Hey this vehicle has like a special suspension and brake package.” It also does things for safety so if you have special safety restraint system in your car for some reason, that is the digit that will tell you. The fifth digit, in this case S, is the series. So in the 1980’s for example, General Motors made these nice trucks that were C and K series, and R and V series. This just basically meant two wheel drive and four wheel drive. But it was several different series. So in this case we have S series, which happens to be an S10 series truck, though they don’t usually you know connect like that. The sixth digit is, along with the seventh digit is the body style, so if it was a convertible, or a two door, or a four door. Whatever that body style is, that is what the sixth and the seventh digit represent. The eighth digit, in this case a Z, is one of my favorites, the engine size. So if you go to a junkyard for example, and you want to know what engine is under the hood of this car, rather than opening the hood, you can go to this thing. And if you know that you are looking for a Z engine, then you see Z in the eighth digit, then boom you got what you want. This is really helpful for vehicles that had two different engines during the same year. So like a S10 for example or a blazer. Something like that could have a 4.3 liter that was a Z series or a W series. And they had totally different parts attached to them . So when you are buying engine parts for those trucks, you need to make sure you know whether you have a Z series or a W series engine. The ninth digit right here is called a check digit. And we call it a check digit because the purpose of it is to check the rest of the VIN to make sure it is legit. You do this by putting it through some complex math which you can find on the internet if you go browsing around for it. And you hopefully come out with the right number. You input numbers from throughout the VIN and through the math it spits out a number, and hopefully it is the right one. Hopefully it’s a three in this case. If it comes out as a five, you know that these other numbers in the VIN, are not legit. Somebody made up this VIN. The tenth digit, right here is the year, which is amazingly helpful if you’re in a junkyard or showing off to your friends, or something like that, or you want to seem like you are magical. You can figure out how the years match up to which letters and which numbers by the simple handy dandy chart. And you always know what year the vehicles is. So in this case, the tenth digit is M, so you come over to this chart. M is 1991. It’s always a 1991. So if you have this chart, which I’ll make sure that you can print out on this page, you can always know what year a vehicle is. It’s great in a junkyard because you can walk up to a VIN and say “this is a 1988, a VIN J”. And you know you have the right or the wrong part. So, really, really helpful. You can print it out, throw it in your wallet, show off to your friends. The eleventh digit is the plant. And that is, that’s where the vehicle is made. So, a lot of Corvettes were made in Bowling Green Kentucky. And this letter will tell you “oh this is made in Bowling Green Kentucky”. Or maybe they were made in Lansing Michigan, or maybe Detroit Michigan, or who knows where, Illinois. It could really be made anywhere and this is the digit that tells you which plant it was made at. The last six digits right here, are the production line numbers. So most manufacturers, most vehicle manufacturers, start with the numbers one, zero, zero, zero, zero, one. And that is what they start with, the last six digits, and they go up from there. This is normally not an important number as far as buying parts, unless you have one of those vehicles that changed production specifications half way through a production line. So you might have a vehicle that had different mirrors in April of 2004, than it did in August of 2004. So if you have one of those vehicles you need to know this production number, which is really this production number. And that pretty much wraps up VINs. Hopefully you learned something today. Hopefully you enjoyed watching the video. If you did, let me know, and maybe we’ll do some more for you.