The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk VIN cruncher discrepancy

When I first got my '49 truck I put the VIN in the American Classic's VIN cruncher as well as checked a couple of other sources (sorry, I don't remember which ones). The American Classic's cruncher said it was built in (first number is a "5") London, Ontario, Canada. Everything else said it was made in Kansas City, KS. The KC plant makes more sense since the truck spent most of its life in Eastern Colorado. I've looked at other sources that list the GM plants during the time mine was built and a plant in London is not mentioned anywhere. Other than American Classics has an error in their database, does anyone have any idea why there would be this discrepancy in where the truck was built?
Thanks for the thoughts.
Jim

I have found more errors than not in the American Classic's cruncher. If the truck is a '49 and the first number on the VIN is a 5, Kansas City was the assembly plant.

Have you tried the Stovebolt VIN Cruncher developed by Fumblin46?

Everything else American Classics came back with was accurate. However, I assumed that since everyone else came back with KC, they were wrong on that point. I did try Fumblin46's cruncher earlier and it came back with KC as well. As I said, KC makes more sense considering where it was used. I was just wondering if there was a logical explanation why AC would have London as a plant. As an old advertisement says, "Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
Jim

inquiring minds should realize s*** happens! they just messed up - trucks assembled in Ontario woulda been for sale in Canada except in very unusual circumstances, so they'd have a CDN style VIN [3800 series truck = CDN 1400 series], quite different than the US one, and I doubt any of the usual VIN crunchers around take any account of CDN production or even recognize they numbers

Bill

No disrespect to American Classic intended, but the main reason I developed a VIN Cruncher was because I couldn't seem to get their cruncher to display accurate data for anything older than a 60's truck.. I got "Made In Canada" often.

Since AC was the only cruncher I was aware of, and it wasn't working for the numbers I wanted to run, I built one.. and with the help of Red and Xram and a few other folks, we made it pretty accurate.

I think I got as far as 1956 with the current VIN Cruncher.. the fact that American Classics cruncher covers a much wider range of model years (it crunched the '67 Chevy Custom just fine) suggests that perhaps it is mis-interpreting some characters in the VIN.

In short, the wider the range of the crunchers capabilities, the more likely you'll have simular numbering schemes, and the more vigilant you have to be with the code to make sure somebody entering a VIN for a 50's truck dosen't get mixed up with other model years.

I've thought that one way to help a vin cruncher come up with the right answers might be to have the user first click on a button with a profile of the truck concerned. That would allow the cruncher to know it was looking at one era of truck and thus ignore some of the possible intrepretations of the serial number.

Of course that assumes you have seen the truck, and not just the numbers...

While there are several identical characters that mean different things from model year to model year, the key to making a cruncher that dosent get confused is to have it use process of elimination in determining what set of parameters to apply to the specific VIN presented.

It appears that the American Classic cruncher gets hung up on certian characters, and decides, "ahh well this is a canadian truck, so we have to apply the canadian "key" to this VIN".. which is why it often cannot determine anything else other than year and London, Canada.

My '29 thru '56 VIN cruncher works by making the program verify 2 or more characteristics of the VIN before determining the approperate "key" to use. In the event two or more characteristics apply to more than one model year, it then checks for the position of those characteristics to see which model year the VIN most closely resembles. (which is why a 0 gets automatically inserted at the beginning of some VIN numbers)

This problem gets more and more complex the wider the range the crucher covers.. and in the case of American Classics cruncher, which apparently covers model years at least thru '73 as well as U.S. and Canadian numbers.. it can get real hairy.

The problem with having a question and answer session, like, "Click on the truck your vehicle looks most like" is that alot of these trucks may either not be stock when you get them, or might not be anything more than a cab.

Thats why I really want to be able to include stock truck images of trucks for each model year.. so if you just bought what the VIN Cruncher thinks is a '52 Chevy 3100, you can compare whats sitting in your driveway with the stock image the cruncher displays along with the text results.

If a human with resource material can determine the year of a truck based soely on the VIN, then a computer program, with that same resource material, can do the same.

I have a 1965 chevy and the vin cruncher is not responding. I think it has factory air and power steering.

the cruncher doesn't have enough teeth to get past 56, as Fumblin says just above ya - he's the guy who's buildin it, and may eventually get up to 72

Bill

I stopped development on the cruncher at 1956 mostly because I wanted to give Peg and John a chance to eyeball it and reccomend any changes to the overall look, feel, and operation of the thing, but also because I wanted to give it some "test time".. let people fiddle with it, see how often it didn't work right.

I'm happy to report that so far, i've not had any reports of errors or problems since the last update (going on a month ago or so) other than it not identifying some "special" model trucks.. but thats not really an error, it's just not programmed to recognise it.

In the next few days i'll change the page it's on a bit, and add a FAQ or "Why won't it crunch my VIN?!" section.

I never could get American Classic's serial number cruncher to spit out anything resembling the right answer. Fumblin46's works perfectly!