OK, I am wary of putting this in the public domain, but I do need some help so here goes.
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Last year, I set about rebuilding my damaged Rev 3 Turbo into a new shell.
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I bought the shell as pretty much a full car from a guy on the OC, with a blown engine.
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He had been using it daily, and everything seemed normal.
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I agreed a deala fter looking at photos, sent him the cash and had the car shipped to me.
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He neglected tot ell me the car had no VIN plate on it.
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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.
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The car has had an AA inspection in the past and comes up HPI clear, so I'm happy it's legit etc.
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and always have been.
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But it bothers me massively, and I feel like it makes the car pretty worthless.
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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
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"sw20-xxxxxxxx" number normally there.
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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.
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It leads me to thinkt hat it may have been a stolen/recovered back in Japan.
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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.
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However it's a good car, mechanically sound with a lot of new bits, and a lot of hard work has gone into it.
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I don't want to break it if the vin plate thing really isn't a big deal.
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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.
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So what do I do??
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It's a bit of a head scrambler at the minute.
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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.
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it would be a perfect base for my TRD replica project, in other words.
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But this vin thing won't stop niggling at me, and has done for a year now.
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