Quote:
Originally Posted by special-K
They can make mistakes, GM better not!
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Ten years ago I would have fought tooth and nail to say that no VIN errors made it out of the assembly plant. It is a Federal requirement that the VIN is correct, and unique, and we put a lot of effort into making sure that was the case.
With the advent of the internet, though, I've seen so many that there is no denying that mistakes got out.
From a previous thread:
The VIN stamper is a large hydraulic "press" hanging from a tool rail and with the weight offset by a "balancer" (imagine a Harley-Davidson hanging from the ceiling that you are supposed to maneuver into position and activate the turn signal). It is supposed to index to the next digit automatically -but - if you mis hit or get out of sequence for some reason then you have to make a repair. Chevy and GMC have different VIN sequence numbers, requiring different stampers hanging there, so if the operator grabs the wrong press and stamps a Chevy VIN on a GMC, for example, then not only is that particular truck wrong but you are out of sequence on every truck after that.
The assembly line repair person and/or the "quality man" (the foreman's right hand man) follow the vehicles down the line with an "X" stamp and a 5 lb hammer and correct the VIN sequence number as required.
Usually it's not just one truck. It normally takes several trucks before somebody notices, so you'll have five or six trucks that have to be fixed - all without the line stopping - it's quite a scramble for a few minutes while you figure out what went wrong and what has to happen to make it right. You pray nothing else goes to crap while you've got your two best guys otherwise unavailable.
In all that confusion it is easy to imagine how one truck every now and then could slip through.
K