Decoding year/month of manufacture for Ford VINs Decoding year/month of manufacture for Ford VINs
Ford's 17-character VIN uses the following two positions: - 11th character: year of manufacture
- 12th character: month of manufacture
The year and month can be decoded using the following table, and procedure: - Using the 11th character, decode the year using the table on the top. For example, a code of G indicates a 2016-manufacture, H is 2017. Note that the letters O (oh), Q, I (eye), U and Z are not used, to avoid confusion with the numbers zero, one and two, and the letter V.
- Then, using the year and the 12th character, decode the month in the second table. Note that the 12th character (month) is always an alphabet, never a number.
- To decode the month, first identify the column that contains the year, and then look for the 12th character in that column to identify the month.
- For example, if the 11th and 12th characters are HU, then H decodes as the year 2017 in the first table. In the second table, the year 2017 is in the second column, and the 12th character U indicates the month of manufacture is February.
Image courtesy of Ford Motor Corporation
If you're taking delivery of a Ford car, you could save the above image on your phone as a convenient reference to cross-check the moment you're given the VIN. Location of the Ford VIN The VIN on Ford cars is always present and visible in a small gap on the bottom-right of the windshield, near the passenger-side wiper (bottom-right when viewed from the front). The green circle indicates where the VIN is displayed in a window This is how the VIN appears at the bottom-right of the windshield, near the passenger-side wiper
Apart from this location, the VIN is also located in multiple places within the passenger compartment and engine bay - which require some bending to find. For cars shipped from the factory, the VIN is also present on a white sticker on the rear window. More Information at FordEtis While this is a quick way of decoding just the year and month, Ford have made available an online tool that decodes a VIN to provide much more information about their cars, called the Ford Etis tool.
Using the Ford Etis site is very simple: - Visit the URL https://www.etis.ford.com/vehicleRegSelector.do
- In the 'VIN Entry' box, type in the 17-character VIN, and click 'Search'.
- If the VIN is a valid Ford VIN, a results page will be shown describing the car associated with the VIN, which includes the actual date the car was built, and other key details.
- At the bottom of those results, there is a link titled 'There are more minor features for this vehicle, click to expand this list.'
- Clicking that link will show a much larger list of features that are present on the vehicle, as well as features that are absent on this model/variant (the items that start with 'Less' are features that are absent).
Last edited by arunphilip : 6th February 2017 at 09:07.
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