TouringGodet
Well Known and Active Forum User
VOC Member
VOC Forum Administrator
VOC Forum Moderator
The basket case Comet my parents bought in the early '80s had a California title with the frame number as the VIN as it should, but we never bothered to check the title against our UFM. In those days, you just walked in with the title from the previous owner, and that was it, no one had to look at the actual hardware. It was (I believe) a simple typo, or someone misread the stamping, a single digit, a '4' on the UFM, was somehow entered as a '1' on the title. The guy we bought the bike from wasn't even the one that brought it in to California, so someone else prior messed it up. So I move to Ireland, and all of the shipping paper work had the '1'. After arriving, I find out that they need to do a physical inspection to verify the numbers. Yikes, I thought I would be in for a heap of trouble. Nope, the nice lady at the inspection facility took care of it without too much trouble. For the import tax portion of the process, I just had to phone the Customs folks and they re-issued the tax exempt certificate, as the vehicle is old enough to not require an import tax, but I had to have the cert with the proper number on it. It also helped that I had the (no longer issued) Certificate of Authenticity from the VOC. I probably could have switched the number years ago within California without too much trouble, but all's well that ends well. Due to the nuances of the Vincent frame numbering scheme with the different prefix for Comets, and the suffix for the bearings, it turns out the incorrect number on the title did not actually correspond with any frame issued by the factory.
