Can anyone read/decode this?

To me it looks like M96/03?66?00981

I'm not sure the character after 3 or any really it's very hard to read. The car is a 2004 40th so i think the character after the 3 should be 'S' but it looks like a sh1itty 8 or a B to me.

photo327.jpg

 

My guess is 03868*00981

 

I see what looks like the capital N but wrong way around so it could be the M 96/03868400981.
It is crappy, what ever it is.

 

Put a piece of paper on it and use the "pencil trick" to get it to appear more clear.

 

Yeah sadly i thought of it after i looked at the car. I don't own it (yet) i'm considering a purchase.

 

Do you have the chassis SN? I assume you are looking for matching numbers. The chassis number may help make sense of this.

 

By "Chassis SN" do you mean VIN? are they supposed to match? (excuse my ignorance)

 

That engine SN doesn't look like a replacement SN - no AT in the number. With the VIN number you can go to a dealer and get the engine SN or use Auto Atlanta for the same online.

 

I could make out M96 / 03868600981.

 

So you're saying SAT only appears in replacement 345hp engines?

I'm trying to figure out how the engine number proves that it's the 345hp engine. I'll contact a dealer too. See if I can find info that way.

 

I'm not an expert on this, but when I looked up my engine number (it's a replacement) my research told me that AT appears in all replacement engine numbers along with the year the replacement was built.

I don't know if the X51 is an exception but I didn't bump into any information saying it was.

The safe bet is using the dealer. My original point was if you knew what the engine number should be, it could help decipher the collection of dots that make up the SN.