Correct VIN?

What you have is the wrong VIN or the seller is not being truthful. As we all know, it's highly unlikely that the seller would misrepresent the facts about a car he's trying to get rid of. That just never happens.

A suggestion; in the future, use your phone to take a picture of the ID plate on the car. I have been doing this with all my equipment, so that when I need to find a manual online, I don't have to rely on my nearly indecipherable handwriting.

A VIN has a check digit, which will help verify the VIN, same as your SSN and your credit cards, not sure if carfax checks it properly though.

I did take pictures of it, at the seller's suggestion, but when I got home, I couldn't find the pictures. Glad you reminded me. I'll look again. The flash went off so a picture must have been taken, but I always have trouble find the pictures from Android Camera.

Do you have a 'gallery' app? The one that came with the Motorola works really well. The default album is 'camera' and you can make others to move photos into.

You can also log into Google Photos from your computer, your images should be automatically backed up to the Google account associated with the phone.

I've thought about check digits. If I made mistakes on two numbers, it could defeat the check digit. But I doubt I made two mistakes.

Carfax pretty much has to check it becuase I'm sure it has to look at all 17 numbers, and if it's not there, that's what it would say.

Back to my camera, the pictures are in Gallery, though how one is supposed to know that, I don't know. I took a new picture to make sure where they were going and I found the new one but nothing for weeks before. And once I got a message that Gallery is not available. Plus I've got several photos from just before those weeks where only 1/4 or more of the screen is photo and the rest is blanks. I think maybe there's a problem with the SD card. Phone is broken in other ways too.

I'll know if I had the VIN right by tomorrow. I could go look right now, but somehow I can never read it off the dash, even with a flashlight.

Yeah, thanks. They're not there.

That's scarey. I have to check it out some day.

I think it is great, it allows one to delete pictures from your device to free up space and still have the pictures available.

I can't remember if it happens automatically or if you need to first enable the feature on the phone.

You would have to make pretty "smart" mistakes. One digit off leaves a

1 in 11 chance the check digit would match 2 digits off reduces the odds considerably.

see

to see how to check the check digit - - >

Here in Ontario, the seller is required to produce the "sellers kit"

- dealers are not - but you can go to any Service Ontario office or kiosk and request the "sellers information" package - at your own expense - and it will tell you if the vehicle was ever registered out-of-province, and the registration history of the vehicle.

A vehicle written off by insurance can be re-registered with a "salvage" branded title - but if the write-off was out of province and it was repaired before importation, it may not have the "branded" title - but you WILL know it was from out of province - and quite possiblt the last province or state it was registered in.

Okay, I went back to look at the car again. It's only 0.7 miles away. That's by chance but it's good because I've been there 5 times.

And I had the number right, and not only that, it doesn't have plates but on the front is a dealer advertising "plate" that names the dealer where carfax says the owner had his early and late work done. (I think he had his warranty work done there, the later work at a tire store, and when he traded it in, he went back to the same dealer. They changed the pully and balancer and auctioned it, around a month ago, and the guy I'm dealing with has had it on craigslist for a little over 2 weeks.

So he's lying, but I can tolerate a little bit of lying, esp. since it's hard to avoid. Today he said explicitly that drving to Virginia means mostly highway driving, and he's also told me the belt and pump were just replaced, when actually I'll need another one in 2 or 3 years. After the deal is finished, I'll ask him if he's sure he did the belt and pump on this car, or maybe he's thinking of another car, and maybe he'll set me straight. I'll point out that if I wait too long, the belt will break and the car will be in trouble, and I don't think he's malicious, only looking for a sale. I'll try to report back.

And the town isn't 30 miles from here, it's 68, and where it is, much, maybe most of the driving probably was highway after all, though the seller doesn't know one way or the other. Anyhow, the car looks beautiful, better than the more expensive ones I saw.

I had the right vin. It's the story that's false. Can't have everything.

Sounds good. I'll look into it. Current phone broken in 2 or more ways but new phone with more space arriving within a month.

Though I usually use a camera when I plan to take photos.

I think it happens automatically -- I would never have wanted to do this because I only upload edited photos that I actually want to upload. Since I don't have a data plan, it must wait until I'm logged in to my home wifi. I don't like this, and I suppose I could defeat it, but I don't care that much.

I transfer my photos from the phone to my computer by FTP. It works wirelessly, but photos would frequently be damaged in transit (only half of a photo went through, strange colors, other aberrations); never happens if I do the same thing but plugged in via USB.

Micky, you might try reformatting your sdcard in the phone. Sometimes shit happens for no reason at all.

Wouldn't the fact that it's an actual, real, VIN mean that the check digit is true?

The VIN can be on up to 3 places in the car. The plate is one, a typical stamped in number on the vehicle chassis is another often hidden under a carpet flap. On some vehicles there is a third stamped VIN on, say, a chassis rail externally. On a Hilux, for instance, it is on the chassis rail behind the front RHS wheel. All locations must have a matching VIN.

I've been meaning to check if they are there for months. But except for the last 12 or so, I copied all my phone pictures to my netbook and from there to a flash drive and from there to the desktop and the new laptop. And they all look good, at least not damaged.

How cool.

I wonder why.

I didn't want to admit this, but I've been getting a startup warning about my sd card since last fall. But I've been too busy and maybe short of HDD space to copy everything off, reformat, and copy everything back. This seems to be the first time I've ever had trouble because of it.

It is a shame I lost parts of about 8 pictures but they were mostly long shots, farming landscapes, with loads of sky. And maybe the flash never did go off and maybe I never took the pictures of the VIN, I tell myself. At any rate, I was supposed to buy the car tonight, but it's postponed to tomorrow. After I own the car, I can take another picture.

More than that on a modern vehicle. Half of the modules have the VIN written into memory.

I'm mainly concerned where they are *stamped* in.