How to find your VIN number – and what it is

Your VIN will be in your V5 document for the car – your ‘log book’

If that isn’t to hand, then it can be found on your car.
Vehicle make dependant – it may be on one of the following places:
It is often at the bottom of the car windscreen seen from outside the car, often on the passenger side of the vehicle.
It may be on the drivers door pillar (door frame / door jamb) as a metal plate, on a sticker, or stamped in to the metal.
Or inside the engine bay possibly near a suspension strut, or stamped in to the floor of the car near the front seat under the carpet.

We rely on the VIN to be able to get accurate wiring diagrams of your car for tracing wiring faults, locating hidden connector blocks and knowing which pin of the connector to look at for a cable we are tracing. There are many other uses for accurate wiring diagrams for use within fault finding, and a very accurate way of getting the vehicle manufacturers wiring diagram is by using the VIN.

The VIN is made up of 17 characters, these characters give further details about the car.

Characters 1-3
The first three characters represent the World Manufacturer Identifier, or WMI. These digits specify the vehicle’s country of origin, manufacturer, and production division. Essentially, this part of the VIN tells you where the vehicle was built and by who.

Characters 4-8
These characters give detailed information about the vehicle:
Type, style, engine specifics, airbags & seatbelts etc, and gearbox / transmission details

Character 9
Used for fraud prevention & validation. It’s generated based on a mathematical formula involving the other VIN characters. Law enforcement, manufacturers, and registration agencies use this to verify the legitimacy of a VIN.

Character 10
The tenth character reveals the model year of the vehicle. This isn’t always the same as the year the vehicle was built, as model years often start before the calendar year. The code cycles through numbers and letters:

Character 11
This identifies the specific plant where the vehicle was assembled. Each manufacturer uses different codes for their factories.

Characters 12-17
The last six characters form the vehicle’s serial number, which is a unique identifier assigned during production. This section doesn’t follow a specific pattern and is used to distinguish the car from every other one built with the same specs.