Cab swap - What about the VIN?

[duaneo]

Folks,

I've got a somewhat rusty (for California at least) cab, and I'm considering the merits of finding another cab and swapping vs. doing the bodywork on the cab I have. The question I'm pondering is what happens with the VIN? Obviously it's illegal to move the VIN tag from one cab to another, so how is it managed? Is there a formal process to to tell the DMV "Hey it's the same truck but the vin number is changing from X to Y"?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Duane

[Calfdemon]

No, if you try and do it legally, you will get nothing but a headache and major DMV resistance to the point that it won't happen. So just swap the cab and either hang your old door on the new cab (which will put the VIN tag on your new cab), or go ahead and rivet the old tag on to the new door. The reality is that while police officers know to look at VIN plate rivets on current cars and can tell if those plates have been swapped, the majority have no idea what kind of rivets were used in the 60's and 70's and would not know if the VIN plate was swapped on a classic. For example, I took the good parts of my old 72 F250 and used them on my crew cab. I used the front doors from my 72 because the front CC doors were crap. I had to take the Crew Cab VIN plate off and I attached it to the new door from my 72. That is pretty much the same thing as what you are planning to do. DMV would have no clue what to do and all I needed to do was a door swap.

The reality is that a TON of our trucks have had doors swapped at some point or another and VIN plates have been moved from one cab to another pretty regularly. No one really cares. As long as the door plate matches the registration, that is about all that anyone is going to care about in the legal realm. A bunch of our trucks have had frame swaps done and the door VIN's do not even match the frame VIN anymore. Now that part can be an issue if anyone ever checks, but the chance of that is slim too.

Go ahead and swap your cab and display your old VIN tag.

[dailyf100]

There is no vin on these cabs. Switch them all you want.

[Calfdemon]

There is no vin on these cabs. Switch them all you want.

The vin is only on the drivers door and 2 spots on the frame.

[wndsofchng06]

Reviving an old thread, as I am considering a frame swap.

The DMV told me over the phone that if the main vehicle is title in my name they'd have no reason to look at the frame. They also said that when they do inspections for transfer of title (out of state) that they rarely ask for the hidden VIN unless something looks suspicious. He recommended I keep a paper trail (receipts, etc) of the VIN'd components that I switch out.

Flip side to this...Sometimes on older vehicles since they don't know what the original rivets look like, they will verify the hidden VIN for titling purposes.