Engine No. ABV000000 on HPI

[MikLSP 0]

Hi all and sorry if this isn't technical enough for this section (please move if not)...

 

I've recently done an HPI check on this car for sale on the forum and a couple of things came up. Firstly it is being shown as a Cat C rather than Cat D and Phil is helpfully trying to get to the bottom of this but also the engine number is shown as ABV000000 :confused4:

 

Obviously this isn't an actual engine number and I was wondering what could result in it being listed like this? Could the engine have been changed and perhaps that is the reason the car is a Cat C instead of D? Alternately could it be related to the cars apparent trip to ABT, they may have replaced the engine.

 

I'm not totally against Cat C cars but would of course like to know the extent of what caused it to receive that classification. What do you guys think, could this engine code be related or indeed be a problem and what's my best bet for trying to find out?

 

Cheers,

 

Mik

[Kevin Bacon 5]

What does the engine number on the V5 say? ABV is correct at least. I'd be more worried if it said KR or something :D

 

I wouldn't worry about it too much. The car has been in the family 9 years and seems genuine.

 

I HPI'd mine and it came up clear, but I know for a fact it had insurance work done. I wouldn't trust them at all tbh.

[MikLSP 0]

I called Experian and they confirmed that the same engine code is held with the DVLA so not sure how it got "reset" at some point. They did say it wouldn't be a problem if I gave them the code from the actual engine it would get updated on their system and show correctly on future reports.

 

I think if yours had insurance work it is correct not to show on the HPI check, it's only a total loss that gets recorded. :)

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Ah right, I thought HPI revealed all previous accident history, my mistake! :D

 

If the DVLA think the engine number is all zeros, that's is a little odd! I can't imagine anyone would give them that number, so must be an issue at their end.

[MikLSP 0]

Yeah that's what I was thinking, some sort of admin error causing it to default to zeros or something.

 

Doesn't seem like a common occurrence though, just about the only other thing I could find was another topic on here which was thrown up in an advanced google search ;)

[mikkijayne 0]

HPI is definitely not infallible - I had a Scirocco which had been stolen-recovered and written off and was still listed as clear on HPI :cuckoo:

[C.P 0]

talking of admin errors.

I phoned up my insurance company a few years ago when i had my mk2 golf to see how much it would be to change the policy over to my corrado. They must have changed the car details without changing the reg no to get a quote because since that time when ever i put my golfs reg into the dvla thing it came up as a corrado :shrug:

 

maybe a bit off topic, but just shows that it can happen quite easily.

[Toad 0]

My V5 this same issue. I have no engine number on my engine. It was replaced sometime after 2001.

[Timbo 0]

I HPIed my car again and it's not marked as stolen and recovered. I guess that's good for me :shrug:.

[MikLSP 0]

My V5 this same issue. I have no engine number on my engine. It was replaced sometime after 2001.

 

There's no engine number on the actual engine at all? Is this common with replacement engines?