Rebodying a car

maschinenbau wrote: This question pertains to me. Anyone have experience titling street rods in Indiana? Say I have a 1931 Model A body. Bought with cash, no VIN, no title, no bill of sale. Say I also have a 90's something that will be donating its engine, trans, and suspension subframes. Scratch building the frame. Donor car has VIN and clean title in my name. Could I just cut the VIN off the donor car and weld it the Model A's firewall? They look nothing alike so it could raise suspicion, but most of the important parts are from the donor. Consider it a "re-body". Or is there a process for applying for a brand new VIN with the proper year, make, and model of the Model A body?

In WA they have a whole set of hot rod/home built rules. If it looks like a 31 model A, you can get it titled as that but with a hod rod tag, they will even issue a year correct tag for it. Its pretty clear here, but the rules between hot rod and home built are very different.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: My vote is to use the VIN of whichever car the officer who just pulled you over thinks he's looking at.

Exactly what I was going to say, but way more eloquent.

java230 wrote:

maschinenbau wrote: This question pertains to me. Anyone have experience titling street rods in Indiana? Say I have a 1931 Model A body. Bought with cash, no VIN, no title, no bill of sale. Say I also have a 90's something that will be donating its engine, trans, and suspension subframes. Scratch building the frame. Donor car has VIN and clean title in my name. Could I just cut the VIN off the donor car and weld it the Model A's firewall? They look nothing alike so it could raise suspicion, but most of the important parts are from the donor. Consider it a "re-body". Or is there a process for applying for a brand new VIN with the proper year, make, and model of the Model A body?

In WA they have a whole set of hot rod/home built rules. If it looks like a 31 model A, you can get it titled as that but with a hod rod tag, they will even issue a year correct tag for it. Its pretty clear here, but the rules between hot rod and home built are very different.

When I built my Daytona Spyder replica in WA off a '75 Corvette chassis, it was titled and registered as a '72 Ferrari "replica/assembled." Their reasoning was that since it looked like a '72 Ferrari, registering it as a Corvette would raise suspicions in the police viewing it that it was in fact a stolen Ferrari. What I liked most about it was that the inspection that was done then was only to make sure that nothing was stolen to build it (had to have receipts for every major part).

In reply to Chris_V:

Yep i think WA has it worked out very well. Had to do the same inspection for my trailer.

maschinenbau wrote: This question pertains to me. Anyone have experience titling street rods in Indiana?

SEMA has a 'tag and title tool box' with information for all 50 states.

http://www.semasan.com/page.asp?content=titling&g=semaga

Cutting off VIN plates and welding them to other bodies is generally frowned upon.

In reply to stuart in mn:

It's not welded on the original car.

I just asked the guy I have do state inspections. He basically said it goes with the body. If its old enough the vin tags are riveted in somewhere, they should be relocated to roughly the same place on whatever parts had to be refabricated.

Uncle Ben will have the Rambler VIN riveted to the Lexus shock tower when it's finished as that's roughly analogous to the original Rambler location.

I figure since he's the one that's going to give the thumbs up/down it's best to ask him.

SVreX wrote: It will be a Challenge car. But I have built so many Challenge abortions that have no afterlife, it leaves me a little frustrated.

Ok, so you're saying it's going to be a Mustang body on a Justy chassis? Good.

:)

In reply to n8:

Let's see...

We've had a Mustang body on a Supra chassis,

and a Justy body on a Mustang chassis...

I have a Justy...

Nah, no Mustangs. I want something much weirder.