Stolen truck found after 30 years

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hack_man

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You’ve mentioned similar things in the past that make KS sound petty and overbearing. Was it factory wheels on a squarebody in order to register it or something silly like that?
MA used to be over the top years ago. I remember my wife got stopped twice in the same trip for an expired emissions sticker by just a month. It's not like that anymore in fact the highways are like the Wild West now.
 

Ricko1966

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You’ve mentioned similar things in the past that make KS sound petty and overbearing. Was it factory wheels on a squarebody in order to register it or something silly like that?
Yet as an antique you have to have factory, wheels,,engine, tire size. The thing is not many cops would pull you over to mess with you about it. There's a few of them that do, actually I think there's been enough complaints that they've started easing up. Like I arqured with them years ago. So Cragers make a 57 Chevy no longer an antique,it's still the same age and everybody ran Cragers with these were on the street. Nope same wheels I think technically it would still have to be a 283 car since nothing bigger was available in 57. But it's a lot like fast class racing. You change modify etc. Just don't draw an attention and make your mods not visually noticeable. I had to round up some factory wheels for the 75k when I got it. Also whatever inspector does your car it also depends on how picky and how knowledgeable they are. But they do have a book on where the frame numbers are and check them.
 

hack_man

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Yet as an antique you have to have factory, wheels,,engine, tire size. The thing is not many cops would pull you over to mess with you about it. There's a few of them that do, actually I think there's been enough complaints that they've started easing up. Like I arqured with them years ago. So Cragers make a 57 Chevy no longer an antique,it's still the same age and everybody ran Cragers with these were on the street. Nope same wheels I think technically it would still have to be a 283 car since nothing bigger was available in 57. But it's a lot like fast class racing. You change modify etc. Just don't draw an attention and make your mods not visually noticeable. I had to round up some factory wheels for the 75k when I got it. Also whatever inspector does your car it also depends on how picky and how knowledgeable they are. But they do have a book on where the frame numbers are and check them.
Sounds like a police state! Why would they care about factory wheels? I could understand factory tire size within reason, guess I'd be screwed there. Jeeze back in the day I remember the monster truck craze, huge tires on jacked suspensions and headers. Ah good old upstate NY I miss it.
 

Ricko1966

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Sounds like a police state! Why would they care about factory wheels? I could understand factory tire size within reason, guess I'd be screwed there. Jeeze back in the day I remember the monster truck craze, huge tires on jacked suspensions and open headers. Ah good old upstate NY I miss it.
I could register it,just not as an antique. Kinda like when I say a car that's the wrong color, wrong wheels, wrong interior,lowered, etc isn't restored. It's a custom still nice but not a restoration. Kansas says an antique vehicle has to be an antique vehicle, not a custom vehicle, not a hot rod etc. But if you want to do anything you want to your 57 Chevy you can, it just no longer qualifies as antique.
Also if you are registering a car from out of state they verify the frame,engine,and body number. Also if registering an Antique they inspect that. That is to recover stolen Vehicles. and so many people think it's a big deal that they do that.
But think about this situation for a minute you live in let's say Texas and have a very nice squarebody. I live in Texas and have a total pile of a Squarebody. I can steal your truck swap my dash plate and sell for a premium price in another state using my title and vin. Your police are looking for your truck. Kansas police aren't but when they find the frame and body numbers don't match they just found your truck. A car thief can make a lot more money stealing a nice car and selling it with a vin they took off a beater, than they will make parting the truck out. And parting it puts them in contact with dozens of people, dozens of people to sense something wrong and report it. Wheras 1 sale,out of state full price, done.and if it sold where they don't inspect like Kansas does, they'll get away with it.
 
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hack_man

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I could register it,just not as an antique. Kinda like when I say a car that's the wrong color, wrong wheels, wrong interior,lowered, etc isn't restored. It's a custom still nice but not a restoration. Kansas says and antique vehicle has to be an antique vehicle, not a custom vehicle, not a hot rod etc. But if you want to do anything you want to your 57 Chevy you can, it just no longer qualifies as antique.
Got it. I didn't realize it had to do with antique status. I think some states can be picky about mods like bumper height and noise level. Trucks are so hard to mod these days I think it's less common than back in the 80's.
 

YakkoWarner

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I could register it,just not as an antique. Kinda like when I say a car that's the wrong color, wrong wheels, wrong interior,lowered, etc isn't restored. It's a custom still nice but not a restoration. Kansas says an antique vehicle has to be an antique vehicle, not a custom vehicle, not a hot rod etc. But if you want to do anything you want to your 57 Chevy you can, it just no longer qualifies as antique.
Also if you are registering a car from out of state they verify the frame,engine,and body number. Also if registering an Antique they inspect that. That is to recover stolen Vehicles. and so many people think it's a big deal that they do that.
But think about this situation for a minute you live in let's say Texas and have a very nice squarebody. I live in Texas and have a total pile of a Squarebody. I can steal your truck swap my dash plate and sell for a premium price in another state using my title and vin. Your police are looking for your truck. Kansas police aren't but when they find the frame and body numbers don't match they just found your truck. A car thief can make a lot more money stealing a nice car and selling it with a vin they took off a beater, than they will make parting the truck out. And parting it puts them in contact with dozens of people, dozens of people to sense something wrong and report it. Wheras 1 sale,out of state full price, done.and if it sold where they don't inspect like Kansas does, they'll get away with it.

I can understand the body and frame number check, but I'd be concerned if they reject a vehicle based on the engine number. On older vehicles, the odds of the engine/transmission not having been replaced at some point are pretty low. Are they just checking to ensure those components aren't also listed as stolen, or do you really have to have a numbers matching drivetrain to register?
 

Ricko1966

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I can understand the body and frame number check, but I'd be concerned if they reject a vehicle based on the engine number. On older vehicles, the odds of the engine/transmission not having been replaced at some point are pretty low. Are they just checking to ensure those components aren't also listed as stolen, or do you really have to have a numbers matching drivetrain to register?
They won't necessarily reject you on engine number. But it's like smog check it has too fit in certain criteria to be accepted, a big block, a bigger engine at all, a gas engine in a diesel or vice versa that wasn't available that year would be a problem. If the inspector knew they didn't have 350s or 454s or LSs in 1957 you would fail but most of them aren't that knowledgeable and the real reason for checking the numbers is looking for stolen stuff. I think all they do with the engine number is run it for theft. I don't think they verify what engine size that number goes too. I think it's also to keep guys from dragging a model T out of a field, putting it on a different frame with a big block,4speed and a 9inch and then registering it as an antique. So they had to make rules and the rules have to apply to everyone, so the guy who just wants different wheels is caught in laws written to stop a different situation.
 
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Grit dog

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I could register it,just not as an antique. Kinda like when I say a car that's the wrong color, wrong wheels, wrong interior,lowered, etc isn't restored. It's a custom still nice but not a restoration. Kansas says an antique vehicle has to be an antique vehicle, not a custom vehicle, not a hot rod etc. But if you want to do anything you want to your 57 Chevy you can, it just no longer qualifies as antique.
Also if you are registering a car from out of state they verify the frame,engine,and body number. Also if registering an Antique they inspect that. That is to recover stolen Vehicles. and so many people think it's a big deal that they do that.
But think about this situation for a minute you live in let's say Texas and have a very nice squarebody. I live in Texas and have a total pile of a Squarebody. I can steal your truck swap my dash plate and sell for a premium price in another state using my title and vin. Your police are looking for your truck. Kansas police aren't but when they find the frame and body numbers don't match they just found your truck. A car thief can make a lot more money stealing a nice car and selling it with a vin they took off a beater, than they will make parting the truck out. And parting it puts them in contact with dozens of people, dozens of people to sense something wrong and report it. Wheras 1 sale,out of state full price, done.and if it sold where they don't inspect like Kansas does, they'll get away with it.
Ya that just means KS is overbearing and the buyer from KS just got screwed unless stolen car salesmen go around giving out their real name and ID and let you buy it from their real house.
They gone and you stuck with a car that the state won’t register.
For your theory to prove it’s useful 2 things have to happen.
1. Seller of said vehicle has to be really really dumb.
2. The state (KS) has to treat some random stolen vehicle case like csi.
Which would be the first time I’ve ever seen that.
In the last 30 years anywhere we’ve lived, the cops couldn’t give 2 schitts about a stolen car.
 
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Ricko1966

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Yep the buyer gets screwed unless they can catch the thief and I've posted documented headline making cases before. I've had 1 friend lose a vehicle. I've had to have 5 or so inspected I've lost count. Could be 10 or 12. And it's not my thoery, it's Kansas's theory and at one point in time they had posters and flyers at the DMV showing how successful the program was and how many stolen Vehicles they recovered. I think it's a good policy. And if your truck got stolen, you'd like the we check the registration VINs thoroughly policy, especially if it gets your truck back. And IMHO anything that makes a stolen vehicle harder to sell,and easier to recover, is a good policy. How inconvenient and overbearing is it really to verify that your vehicle is legit,1 time in your life per vehicle? Any effort to find stolen vehicles and make them harder to sell is better than no effort.
 

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Bextreme04

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Yep the buyer gets screwed unless they can catch the thief and I've posted documented headline making cases before. I've had 1 friend lose a vehicle. I've had to have 5 or so inspected I've lost count. Could be 10 or 12. And it's not my thoery, it's Kansas's theory and at one point in time they had posters and flyers at the DMV showing how successful the program was and how many stolen Vehicles they recovered. I think it's a good policy. And if your truck got stolen, you'd like the we check the registration VINs thoroughly policy, especially if it gets your truck back. And IMHO anything that makes a stolen vehicle harder to sell, is a good policy. How inconvenient and overbearing is it really to verify that your vehicle is legit,1 time in your life per vehicle? Any effort to find stolen vehicles and make them harder to sell is better than no effort.
It's an interesting problem, because really you aren't going to stop the theft or punish the thief this way unless they are really terrible at it. Most of these aren't taking them out of state, they do the swap in-state and then sell the newly franklensteined truck to someone in the same state. The theft is never discovered until the vehicle is sold out of state. Then it is like this situation where the last person holding the bag gets screwed, and the person who had their vehicle stolen gets something back that they may or may not even need/want/be able to do anything with. Good luck finding the original thief from 30 years ago.
 

Ricko1966

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Wow, you brought up some very good points. The DMV says most if these cases are out of state sales, but they only do the multipoint VIN check on out of state, salvage,antique and a couple other vehicles. So the numbers may lie since they aren't checking in state sales. The friend was actually a part of a group of us that went to Little Sahara every memorial day, friend of a friend kind of deal. In his instance the VIN check caught it as stolen, he lost it, but the thieves weren't very smart, he was able to tell the Police who and where he purchased it, the police went there,made a bust and found more stolen vehicles
 
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Grit dog

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Yep the buyer gets screwed unless they can catch the thief and I've posted documented headline making cases before. I've had 1 friend lose a vehicle. I've had to have 5 or so inspected I've lost count. Could be 10 or 12. And it's not my thoery, it's Kansas's theory and at one point in time they had posters and flyers at the DMV showing how successful the program was and how many stolen Vehicles they recovered. I think it's a good policy. And if your truck got stolen, you'd like the we check the registration VINs thoroughly policy, especially if it gets your truck back. And IMHO anything that makes a stolen vehicle harder to sell, is a good policy. How inconvenient and overbearing is it really to verify that your vehicle is legit,1 time in your life per vehicle? Any effort to find stolen vehicles and make them harder to sell is better than no effort.
I wasn’t insinuating it was your theory or idea. And you’re right, it doesn’t really matter until it hits home.
 

Grit dog

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It's an interesting problem, because really you aren't going to stop the theft or punish the thief this way unless they are really terrible at it. Most of these aren't taking them out of state, they do the swap in-state and then sell the newly franklensteined truck to someone in the same state. The theft is never discovered until the vehicle is sold out of state. Then it is like this situation where the last person holding the bag gets screwed, and the person who had their vehicle stolen gets something back that they may or may not even need/want/be able to do anything with. Good luck finding the original thief from 30 years ago.
Same point I was trying to make.
And I’m surely not bagging on KS laws in general, because I could find a solid handful from WA that I’d gladly trade for the KS vin inspection laws. lol.
 

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