New veedubber

Hi, im new to the whole car scene and i decided to get a beetle as my first car. I recently moved to kensington, NSW for studies and im just waiting on getting my license. Been a car nut all my life and finally got to this moment where i finally officially own my own car.

I bought a 73 type 1 super beetle that was modified into a convertible. It had a reconditioned engine swapped in exchange for its previous engine in 09. It runs beautifully but the body and interior needs some work on it. Turning this into a project car and focusing on performance.

I was wondering since im still quite new to NSW and not quite used to the rules, the current rego is still registered under the previous engine number, will i encounter any problem with registering the new number of the recond engine?

Been about 10 years since I last lived in NSW, but back then (don't know what the go is now) you went to the RTA checking station and they inspected the engine numbers etc, then you went to the RTA office and had the numbers changed on the rego.

As it's also been a while since I had a car inspected annually for rego (moved to VIC, then to SA) - the mechanic may or may not inspect engine numbers when he does the inspection for rego. Like I said, been a while so can't remember what they check for rego these days.

Welcome to the forum as far as I know you just need to advise of change of engine number, provided it is within 10% capacity of the existing engine then it shouldnt be a problem

Welcome to here 🙂

Generally it's not too difficult to get an adjustement of records done to swap the engine number over.

It's money for nothing thats for sure, I've been through it more times than I care to remember.

It does help if you have a reciept for the new engine but looking at that pic looks as though it may be one of those new Mexican crate engines that don't come with an engine number stamped in.

In that case you just have to get a police issue number stamped on.
A mate went through it when he bought one of those crate engines.

Joel wrote:It does help if you have a reciept for the new engine but looking at that pic looks as though it may be one of those new Mexican crate engines that don't come with an engine number stamped in.

If you have the original engine number (or at least, the one on the rego), it is far simpler to just stamp that into it if it is an unstamped Mex. engine.

That's the idea behind it over seas and people here do it but it's actually illegal to do in any state here.

My mate with the crate motor first did that and the authorities found out and had a spack out, made him get it stamped with a police issue number.

Also causes a problem if you sell your old engine and someone rebuilds it and tries to use, comes up as being already used.

If you can destroy all evidence of your original engine (in a bon fire works well, great party trick 😂) then you may get away it but anyone who knows VWs would soon pick that a Mexican engine has a German engine number.

thanks for the advice! I had quite a few weeks to go over this car and i decided that i might just try and do some improvements on this car and sell it off hopefully for a small profit. This beetle isnt exactly what i had in mind. Hoping to look for a 1600 hardtop with a flat dashboard without any body work required.