many of us will go buy a 3rd gen. only to then find the console has been changed. or the SPID is missing. or simply unreadable.what to do ? surely there must be a way to determine what our cars were equipped with other than a flimsy piece of paper installed in a very bad spot. it has been said that the VIN is useless in all but what engine it came with. how can we ,as owners by pass this problem?? im sure others have run into this brick wall . what can be done?

 

It only costs $5 to get 5 VIN lookups on Compnine now. Couldn't you just go that route?

 

i wish, as mentioned, the VIN only will tell which engine the car was equipped with originally

 

Have you ran your vin at compnine.com ?

 

Compnine only goes back to 90 for F-bodies unless they are Canadian.

 

You can get your original dealer invoice from the GM Heritage Center for $50. Not cheap, but I'm debating it just to get my build date.

 

hmmmmm? original dlr invoice for my car!!?? with that i could back track it to the original owner . maybe

 

Dealer invoice will have a due date, not a build date. But you could surmise that the build date was 2 weeks previous to invoice.

The invoice will have the dealer name, not the consumer. Finding the original owner would be difficult without the bill of sale. File copy of bill would have been destroyed by dealership 20 years ago. Even if they still had it archived, they would not share it with you for security reasons.

 

We all know the headache of faded/missing tags in our f-body's. But there may be hope for you yet, on some of these vehicles you can find the factory build sheet under the carpet beneath the driver seat! I have found both build sheets in my 91rs and my 86 iroc under the seat.

 

My invoice says the car was invoiced on 7-17 and shipped on 7-17. The door sticker says 7/87 and the Instrument panel test sheet says 7-12-87. The radiator has a stamp that says Jun 30 on it and I found a box on the build sheet that says Sched. Mo. Date 07-16. That might give you an idea of the timeline for the car.

 

ok, im trying to narrow down what exactly I have here. mine is a 1986 Camaro with all but a few factory options. it has all the IROC bits . BUT im trying to definitively prove it is or is not. mine COULD be a heavily optioned Z-28,but without the SPID .all proof is lost apparently

 

Look at the door sticker. Does it specify 16" rims? If so, you have an IROC-Z. The Z28 only had 15" rims.