Moparbastard
Member
It's been a while since I posted about bringing my slant six '70 Challenger back from Thailand. So much to unpack - Thai red tape is enough to test anyone's faith. I couldn't get the export permit because the car hadn't been registered in 10 years. The people at the DMV near me wouldn't register the car - it needed the chassis (VIN) and engine numbers verified. They do that there, but not on cars like this. The guy took one look at it and said, "No way". Wouldn't even look at the VIN. So I drove the Challenger all the way down to Chonburi - 84 miles round trip- unregistered, uninsured, no plates and no air with my expired Thai driver's license. When I got to that DMV they actually looked at VIN and scratched around the engine. The engine number didn't match the title. It's a numbers matching car. Nope. It had to have some oddball number 13608/13 and 2 Thai letters. "But you did it before". "No."
I drove home disappointed and searched and searched for that number. I found a bunch of other numbers but not that one. In desperation I decided to stamp the number on myself. After 3 hours of searching I finally found a number punch set. My Thai is not that good and buying stuff here is not like in the states. They have small specialty shops for everything. "Where will I stamp the number?" The title, which a nice customer at the DMV translated for me said "left side of the engine". I figured I'd stamp it in the top of the head in the middle just to the left of the valve cover. That's on the left. I couldn't do the Thai letters but I could do the numbers and pray. I started scraping the grease and crud off of the head in that spot and lo and behold there was the number, right where I was going to stamp it. Who put it on there and why? There's a perfectly good number on the engine from the factory - partial VIN and everything. Doesn't matter. 6 days later I made the long hot trip back to Chonburi. To my relief they allowed me to register the car this time. $145 and 2 hours waiting. New plates, new title, new registration.
The next day I went back to the DMV in Banglamung. They took my day old plates, canceled my day old title and issued my export certificate. What a hassle! For nothing! Last Monday I had the Challenger hauled by ramp truck to a big loading yard in Lat Krabang(near Bangkok) where, after waiting 3 1/2 hours for them to get my container on the ground, we loaded the car. I tied it down myself. The ship is sailing on Saturday.
I drove home disappointed and searched and searched for that number. I found a bunch of other numbers but not that one. In desperation I decided to stamp the number on myself. After 3 hours of searching I finally found a number punch set. My Thai is not that good and buying stuff here is not like in the states. They have small specialty shops for everything. "Where will I stamp the number?" The title, which a nice customer at the DMV translated for me said "left side of the engine". I figured I'd stamp it in the top of the head in the middle just to the left of the valve cover. That's on the left. I couldn't do the Thai letters but I could do the numbers and pray. I started scraping the grease and crud off of the head in that spot and lo and behold there was the number, right where I was going to stamp it. Who put it on there and why? There's a perfectly good number on the engine from the factory - partial VIN and everything. Doesn't matter. 6 days later I made the long hot trip back to Chonburi. To my relief they allowed me to register the car this time. $145 and 2 hours waiting. New plates, new title, new registration.
The next day I went back to the DMV in Banglamung. They took my day old plates, canceled my day old title and issued my export certificate. What a hassle! For nothing! Last Monday I had the Challenger hauled by ramp truck to a big loading yard in Lat Krabang(near Bangkok) where, after waiting 3 1/2 hours for them to get my container on the ground, we loaded the car. I tied it down myself. The ship is sailing on Saturday.
