Posted by Clint Dixon on Monday, January 08, 2007 at 19:29:32 :
In Reply to: Re: proper vin # question posted by Allen Patnode on Monday, January 08, 2007 at 17:21:20 :
...wrong on the title, that is. Some states once used the engine number to register vehicles.
I bought my '51 in Wisconsin from the original owner. (Okay, so he had passed away, and I bought it from his wife. But they both used the truck equally after taking delivery shortly after their wedding. So technically she can be considered one half of the "original owner").
Anyway, she signed over the original title to me. I brought it and the truck home and didn't notice until I went to surrender it to the Illinois DMV that it listed the engine number. An error I thought, so I sent it back to the previous owner in Wisconsin. She sent it in to the DMV in Wisconsin, got it "corrected", and sent me the new replacement.
BIG MISTAKE!
Illinois didn't care one way or the other. To them it was just a number. If I had kept my mouth shut, I could have requested to keep the original title for my records and they would have returned it along with my new title. By the time I had relized this, it was too late. Wisconsin had already destroyed the original.
Having that original title would have been a nice document to stay with the truck.
The moral to the story (one that I always seem to miss) is to never ask any more questions than you have too when it comes to big brother.
Junior
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