Location of color code
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1st Gear Member
Joined: Sep 2024
Posts: 140
From: South Sweden near Copenhagen
A car that was sold in the US and has a quick color change and the odometer has been messed with? All you need now is to find out the computer VIN does not match the body VIN and you will have checked all the boxes of a stolen car. Course I am not sure you would need to swap the PCMs cause you could just by pass the extra key security.
The blue underneath may indicate some kind of reclaimed car that was totaled. Changing colors of a car, so it is hard to tell it was done, can be pricy. There is a lot of labor in painting the door jams and under the hood. It can take 80+ hours extra unless the person does it every day. Why do all that work and not prep the car or use cheap paint? I guess it could have been a DYI that pulled a lot of the interior, weather seals, doors, and stiped the stuff off the inner fender and firewall. They would still need to understand back taping and a few other professional level techniques. Without back taping you would have lines in the paint where you switched from painting the interior to exterior. Unless you pulled the hood the hatch and doors and painted everything at once.
I am sure your car is fine I just like puzzles. Maybe a younger body-man/painter with a low budget did his own car. The speedo cluster was changed because the original failed, you got me with blue paint under a car that was white and then turned red. Here is the states most salesmen call red, "sell me red". On a sports car they sold fast back in the day. It was common to change to red. Heck my 67 in my sig was blue originally but it did go through a restoration. In fact they painted too much. They painted the dash right under the windshield red when it should have been black.
The blue underneath may indicate some kind of reclaimed car that was totaled. Changing colors of a car, so it is hard to tell it was done, can be pricy. There is a lot of labor in painting the door jams and under the hood. It can take 80+ hours extra unless the person does it every day. Why do all that work and not prep the car or use cheap paint? I guess it could have been a DYI that pulled a lot of the interior, weather seals, doors, and stiped the stuff off the inner fender and firewall. They would still need to understand back taping and a few other professional level techniques. Without back taping you would have lines in the paint where you switched from painting the interior to exterior. Unless you pulled the hood the hatch and doors and painted everything at once.
I am sure your car is fine I just like puzzles. Maybe a younger body-man/painter with a low budget did his own car. The speedo cluster was changed because the original failed, you got me with blue paint under a car that was white and then turned red. Here is the states most salesmen call red, "sell me red". On a sports car they sold fast back in the day. It was common to change to red. Heck my 67 in my sig was blue originally but it did go through a restoration. In fact they painted too much. They painted the dash right under the windshield red when it should have been black.
You got me curious regarding if the digital VIN matching the one under the windshield, but my OBD reading equipment is unable to pick up the car id, not sure if it is because the car is too old (96) or due to not enough advanced reading equipment.
Tried to remember how it was on the 99 Cadillac I owned recently, but I think it was the same deal there were as my two daily drivers from 2009 & 2018 it picks up full id.
The paint job overall looks good including places as underside of the trunk lid, hood, engine bay (black) and in door jams. There are 3-4 of bubbles but so small you hardly notice them except for one, there is also one place in the front where they have used too much paint, but that can be polished away I’ve been told.
In all if you would compare with car in the same age and color in good condition, but with the clear coat partly coming off which is common, mine would look a lot better.
I noticed the paint not being so durable when I worked in the engine bay leaning over the fender and the zipper on my fleece jacket left some small marks there, noticed it was black paint under the thin red, maybe a strategy to catch the uneven spots before putting on the final paint.
I totally agree with you that if you take the time to undress the car so you can paint it almost everywhere, you might as well do the job right all the way.
To further add to the mystery, I found some odd welding’s behind the front wheel wells on both sides, I have a theory that it may be repairs from using this as a lifting point instead of the correct lift spots on the frame.
Underside of car otherwise very clean and had no paint apart from the factory thin light gray-green, on exception is however the front suspension lower arms that looked like someone had power washed them with seawater, very brown with surface rust.
The dark blue was a 5mm edge on the underside on one of the rear fenders.
When fixing the horn recently I could see that the steering wheel airbag was not connected, didn’t even have a harness to it. If they were replacing a blown airbag, why remove the harness? Maybe disconnected as they didn’t trust such old air bag….
The ad for the car had been out there for a long time, and likely so being an import with a contradictiousmileage history plus being sold at the kind of dealership that sometimes can be shady.
When the price dropped, I figured whatever the car has been through in the past before being imported (2001), it has been on the roads here for 23 years and past the same number of traffic safety inspections, and have had 15 owners, if it drives ok I’ll take my chance on it, and so far I’m very glad I did.
Its stable on the road and drives and brakes straight, road handling surprisingly good for being on 235/60/16’s, but I must confess it was a bit of a shock in the beginning being used to the silk smooth comfort in the Cadillac compared to what the Camaro offers
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