VIN stamping

<font face='Comic Sans MS'>Well I'm certainly a long way from being an expert on VIN stampings, but that tranny product looks creepy to me. The stamping pad looks as if it was worked over by a grinder/file or whatever. The 'K' appears to have been the product of three individual wacks of whatever imprinted that first diget of the VIN. All in all I see nothing genuine about it.

I suppose it could be that the transmission case had to be replaced, and that was someones misguided effort to link it back to the cars' VIN.

But if all other VIN's seem in order, I don't think it's a show stopper to go ahead with the purchase. I do believe the current owner should be quizzed about it and perhaps it may serve as a purchase price bargining point.</font id='Comic Sans MS'>

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I have no idea - however, if you like the car it sounds like you have a nice find there. I wouldn't let this detail detour you from moving along with a purchase.

I'd have to agree that that trans VIN is suspect rather intentional or unintentional, most trans VINs I've seen including mine are very faint but readable when cleaned up, and this one seems too defined and has the wrong type of font as well.

I would recommend that you closely check the 3 VINs on the car-even if it means asking the owner to loosen and pull back the rh fender, and take a close look at the engine block VIN too. Have you done a VIN search on this site to see if its registered? that may be a start....

I also have a 6R07K stamped transmission that looks similar to your stamping. The "7" and "K" seem to be struck using a single line die to form the digit by hand. The rest of the VIN looks normal. To venture a guess; could it be that at San Jose the "K" stamp tooling was worn-out , destroyed, or mis-placed and just formed with straight lines? Mine is a later production date than the yours. It would seem that subsequently the "7" stamp tool was not used on mine.

The K appears to be a 1 used to form a K. Can't recall having seen other SJ cars that looked like that. Generally the block and trans were stamped at the same time they went down the line with the same alpha-numeric stamps. The K has definitely been dummied up.

On my Oct, 65 San Jose "K" Fastback, most of the engine's VIN is barely visible as in lightly stamped. It is in sort of a straight line and the most visible character in my VIN is the "1" (I have three in the number part of the VIN) but it is nothing more than a vertical line. I believe that they were hand stamped so the "1" (or "|") has the least amount of surface contact of any character and would be imprinted deeper in the block. Your "K" looks like that vertical line used to create a worn or missing (lost, misplaced or stolen) "K".

Jim