VIN vs Engine Numbers?

[The1970's]

I was doing a title search on another bike that I have yesterday and noticed on my GS750 that the VIN is -4003 and the engine number is -60326. Does that mean the engine has been replaced or does Suzuki not have continuity on their engine/frames?

[Big T]

No continuity for Suzukis

[Brendan W]

http://www.ozebook.com/compendium/suzi/engine-nos/engnos.htm

[Steve]

Brendan's link is a good one for identifying the production year of an engine or frame, and Big T's comment is also correct, the engine number and frame number of any particular bike have never matched.

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[The1970's]

Interesting, I wonder why Suzuki choose not to keep matching case numbers. It seems like most of the other manufacturers did

[Brendan W]

Stops people dismantling perfectly good motors just to have matching numbers.

[The1970's]

Stops people dismantling perfectly good motors just to have matching numbers.

Haha have to agree with you there. I used to work at a vintage car restoration shop and the things people would do to have their cars "correct" where insane. I say if you cant notice it from the drivers seat then I wouldn't worry about it

[bwringer]

Broadly speaking, one of the reasons we can still ride old Suzukis hard 40 years later is that Suzuki took a lot of production shortcuts. Non-matching engine and frame numbers is one shortcut; it's extra production effort and paperwork for little to no mechanical reason.

A related corporate "personality trait" is deep commonality of parts; Suzuki NEVER redesigns a part without very good reasons. Decades later, OEM parts availability is surprisingly good, since a lot of mechanical parts were used on a wide range of models, and a lot of design features were not changed without good reason. For example, you can replace an 80-83 GS850 stator with a stator from a late-model GS500; the dimensions are the same and the only difference is the connector, a minor detail. The driven spline coupler in the GS shaftie rear wheel is still used on production bikes, the Boulevard C50 and M50 800cc cruisers, which use an engine first produced in 1989 for the VX800.

Same for lots of parts and design features; Suzuki has always made very clever use of their parts bins.

This also means you can find little undocumented variations as well; for example, I've seen a low-mileage early production 1982 GS850GL with a 1981 cylinder head. They used up the parts and engines they had as they came down the line.

[limeex2]

Older (80's-90') Yamaha's had matching vin/eng numbers. Last 7 digits I believe. Not sure if they still do. There is a commonality of Suzuki parts for economic reasons. My older (95) Triumph has parts shared with other bikes and brands. I would assume common parts they use are being made by companies other than themselves.

[Jhurt]

y 1975 RM125 HAD matching frame/engine numbers. Unfortunately the cases were ragged out and I found an NOS set on ebay which i used to rebuild the motor. Now the cases don’t have a number at all and I’m wondering if i had some Uber-rare matching numbers suzuki. Or maybe that was just a function of a first year model production.