TGP VIN database - website inside!

[mfewtrail]

*Big Update 12-20-2016*

 

I finally put the lists to spreadsheet and html format. I don't have them hosted for direct viewing currently, but they can be downloaded here: http://www.filedropper.com/tgpvindatabaseThat link expires in 30 days. The file size is small, something like 165kb. It unpacks to about 6.9mb and includes the 89 Coupe, 90 Coupe, and 90 TSTE list in both spreadsheet and html formats. All of the lists are technically incomplete, but they're far more complete than you will likely ever see.  There are supposed to be 751 1989 coupes, 2,749 1990 coupes, and 1,000 Turbo STE sedans. Those numbers are stated by the Pontiac Historical Society and Compnine also listed the exact same numbers. The totals I ended up at are 734 for the 1989 coupes, 2,740 for the 1990 coupes, and only 200 some odd Turbo STE sedans. The sedan list is so far off because I never got around to running through the list for them. I did add about 150+ cars to it during the course of doing the 1990 coupe list so at least we have that...The VIN program I used quit working before I got around to making my final pass through of the 1990 coupe list. I made it from the 200,000-277,000 range and only added one car I had missed in my previous methods. I also crossed off one car in that range that I had accidentally listed that was not real. Considering I only came up with one car in that large range, I kinda doubt I would have ever produced the other supposed 9 cars made from 277,000 to about 306,XXX.

 

I need to thank a few people below for their help with this.

 

Skitchin - Huge thanks to him for automating the process and literally knocking months or even years off of this project.

 

turbo-v-sick  - Thanks for doing all the leg work on the  1989 coupe list! He has also dug up tons of history and photos on these cars that we might not have ever found without him.

 

ManicMechanic - Thanks for helping with the VIN project and constantly posting pictures and information on these cars making it easier for me to document them. I wouldn't have come across a fraction of the ones you do because I wasn't aware of half of those auction, salvage, etc. sites until you brought them to my attention.

 

I'm probably forgetting some people here, but thanks to anyone that helped in any way, big or small!

 

 

I wanted to turn in the list in a much more complete format but unfortunately it didn't turn out that way. Too bad compnine did away with the several free vin checks per day when my list was still in its infancy. Those were handy in filling out the color and option info on these cars. Eventually I would like to contact them about getting a custom account and have several people help go through and document the vins. That will not be any time soon though. I'm tired of looking at those numbers for now.   I will be lightly modifying the list over time. I have some extra little blurbs of information on some cars I will include in a text document alongside it later. I also want to go through all my old car photos and pull any TGP ones that I documented by vin to upload to a directory to accompany the list. Don't hold your breath on either of those things as it will be quite a while before I get around to them..

Edited January 13, 2017 by mfewtrail

[tornado_735]

I think I still have the vin I pulled off that TGP in the yard here in columbus...do you want it? I can't remember if it was a '90 or a '91 though...

 

***EDIT*** Shit, I think I deleted it.

[RobertISaar]

91 tgp?!

[mfewtrail]

I think I still have the vin I pulled off that TGP in the yard here in columbus...do you want it? I can't remember if it was a '90 or a '91 though...

 

***EDIT*** Shit, I think I deleted it.

 

TGP's were only made from 1989 to 1990.

[tornado_735]

Whoops. It was one of those then. LOL my bad.

 

If it's still there next time I go (doubtful) I'll check it out again.

[ss427]

That's a cool idea. I have a few databases like this going, including one for 1968 Chevrolet fullsize with factory installed 425/425 engine. So far in six years I've found 18 of the original 568 produced! How do you get the vins through carfax? Wouldn't the check digit make that pretty hard?

[RobertISaar]

Wouldn't the check digit make that pretty hard?

 

THIS!

 

i tried doing that with something before and got nowhere, REAL fast.

[jongrappin]

Hello, Im a new TGP owner doing a restore on a 1990 Black TGP with VIN, 1G5WP14V8LF225101

 

What other TGP Forum are you speaking about?

[Crazy K]

I have a failed vin sampling program that extracted all but 50 of the 89 TGP vins. I need to try to extract the reminant data...

[mfewtrail]

Hello, Im a new TGP owner doing a restore on a 1990 Black TGP with VIN, 1G5WP14V8LF225101

 

What other TGP Forum are you speaking about?

 

The sister site to this board(Luke - "LukeZ34" owns them both) http://www.tgpforums.com You've already registered there with the same username you use here because I approved your membership over there very recently. If you have any problems logging in over there, send me a private message here and I'll get you squared away.

 

 

 

I have a failed vin sampling program that extracted all but 50 of the 89 TGP vins. I need to try to extract the reminant data...

 

Ken, what format is that information in?

[Euro]

Nice stuff Matt! I have a very similar database going for the 98 Daytona pace cars. I'm also interested in more of the CarFax is working out for you, do you enter in the numbers of the last part of the TGP vins sequentially?

 

That'd be sweet if I could do that with the 98's...too bad the Daytona package wasn't apart of the VIN haha. My success has to do with random internet searches of Cardomain, Autotrader/ebay/cars.com, GP forums, and crazedlist.org

[mfewtrail]

That's a cool idea. I have a few databases like this going, including one for 1968 Chevrolet fullsize with factory installed 425/425 engine. So far in six years I've found 18 of the original 568 produced! How do you get the vins through carfax? Wouldn't the check digit make that pretty hard?

 

THIS!

 

i tried doing that with something before and got nowhere, REAL fast.

 

I figured I would quote this message in a new reply altogether as this might get lengthy.

 

I had the same concerns when I got started about the check digits, so I did some experimenting with VIN's I already knew. Basically, I searched vins with each check digit to see what CarFax could automatically correct for. I came up with the following for the check digits.

 

0 = 0,1,2,6,9

1 = 0,1,2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

2 = 0, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,X

3 = 1,2,3,4,5,8,9,

4 = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,

5 = 1,2,3,4,5,6,

6 = 0,1,2,4,5,6,8,

7 = 1,2,4,7,9

8 = 2,3,4,6,8,9

9 = 0,3,7,8,9

X = X,2,8

 

The number on the left of the equals sign above represents the check digit used in your actual vin search. As you can see, searching with a check digit of "2," C@rFax can correct for almost every check digit except for the number 9. Therefore, I search with a check digit of 2 and cover 10 out of 11 of those check digits. Then I go back and search again using a check digit of "9" since it's the only one left out. Update - 10/31/10 - If anyone searches vins using my method, it's actually better to use "8" as your second number. The reasoning behind this is that using 2 & 8 will actually auto-correct you to "zero record" cars that you would otherwise be missing.

 

Now, I'll explain my method of going through vins with some screenshots I just grabbed from c@rfax. Let's say I'm starting with a vin of 1G5WP14V2LF203000(note the #2 check digit) up to 1G5WP14V2LF203099(100 vins at a time).

 

I then copy all characters of the vin except the last two and paste that into the VIN box on c@fax's website.

 

 

I leave the last two characters out purposely to get to the following screen on c@rfax's site. As you can see I've already pasted the vin into the new search box that we're now given. This is the page I use to go through vins. Note that it shows "2" characters remaining. This is where I type in "00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07" and so on until I reach 99. After I do that with a check digit of 2, I go through the same set of 100 with a check digit of 9. At that point, I'm done with that set of 100 and move on to the next.

 

Ok, now that I've showed you the method I use, I'll show an example of carfax in action correcting a vin check digit for me. The real vin I'm using as an example is "1G5WP14V5LF203024" - the first one on my database list. So, I type "1G5WP14V2LF203034" with the 2 check digit and get the following from carfax.

 

If you get a real vin, it will go to the following screen and at least have one record listed.

 

Occasionally, you might run across c@rfax sending you to the above page and showing zero records. In my experience going through TGP vins, the cars listed are real, but they're not TGP's. They're regular gp's and if you play around with the vin's some you can figure out what they are. I don't even look at "0" record cars anymore as I believe every actual car to have at least 1 record listed. I guess I'll find that out for sure if I end up with 2,749 VIN's when I'm done with the 1990 coupes.

 

 

Just to give you guys an idea of how I keep up with vins, I do the following. If I'm going through 1G5WP14V2LF200000, I break the vins down into 100's like this. After that, I type out 2's and 9's beside each of those to show that I've checked those particular sets with both check digits already.

 

200000-200099

200100-200199

200200-200299

200300-200399

200400-200499

 

After I get through 1,000 vins, I just make a note showing I've been through "200000-200999" already.

 

 

Hopefully all that crap wasn't too confusing and I explained it clearly enough.

 

EDIT: Another reason I use the page I do is you can see what you just typed right above the vin box. That helps you make sure you're not making errors as you go.

Edited October 31, 2010 by mfewtrail

[RobertISaar]

made sense, but goddamn that has to take a lot of time...

[mfewtrail]

made sense, but goddamn that has to take a lot of time...

 

Yeah, it's not something you're going to accomplish quickly. I'm good with keyboard shortcuts and can type really fast, yet it's still very time consuming. I only go through a few vins here and there as to not go crazy. I've been through 214,XXX something odd vins in the past four months that I've been doing this. I'm into the heart of TGP production because I'm coming up with VIN's often now.

 

If anyone knows a way to automate the process, I'm all ears!

[ss427]

Wow what a great system you have figured out there, and great job explaining it all. Do you go to the compnine site after you get vins in order to get colors and options?

[Crazy K]

IMPORTANT! You are making probable VINs that would be the real car is it was to have existed with that serial number. A VIN that is recognized as having ZERO records CANNOT BE CONSIDERED to be a real VIN. carfax sees VIN numbers as valid VIN, though it may not exist in real life. Technically you MUST get a ZERO hit for a VIN to isolate that a TGP is not assigned to that number. IF YOU DO NOT GET A ZERO HIT FOR EACH SPECIFIC PROBABLE VIN, YOU HAVE NOT ISOLATED THE VIN NUMBER THAT WOULD EXIST IF THAT SERIAL NUMBER WAS BUILT AND ASSIGNED AS A TGP.

 

Keep in mind that most serial numbers belong to other vehicle, but not all of them have an assignment. serial number with no records for any possible combination exist for cars that were never register, destroyed for testing or inspection, used for special internal purposes... basically cars that never reached the general population and were never registered.

 

as for the 1989 TGP file, I have to find it, it was made by a probing program, but the program had glitches and would miss numbers when glitching... PM me your e-mail if you want a copy of the program/files.

[mfewtrail]

Wow what a great system you have figured out there, and great job explaining it all. Do you go to the compnine site after you get vins in order to get colors and options?

 

Yeah, compnine fills in the colors and options for me. Too bad compnine doesn't have build dates for these cars.

[RobertISaar]

huh? compnine actually works on TGP VINs? i've done a few 90 ones and it said they didn't have any info...

[mfewtrail]

huh? compnine actually works on TGP VINs? i've done a few 90 ones and it said they didn't have any info...

 

It works for every 1990 TGP vin I find, the majority of the cars on my list that's up so far were compnine'd to figure out the option. 1989 TGP's do not show up in their database though.

[mfewtrail]

I just added 35 TGP's to the online list today. Finding them at a rate of 2-4 TGP's per 100 vins I go through at this point. I must be to the point where Pontiac was making them pretty steadily.

[jake91]

i need to get mine vin list back out and restart i lost my most recent version in my computor crash but i still have the original files of all the ones i had they just need put back together

[White93z34]

Do you have the vins I gave yo awhile back?

[mfewtrail]

Do you have the vins I gave yo awhile back?

 

I probably do Chris, I can't remember for sure though.

[92 GP]

My VIN is posted on there as #30, just figured I'd let ya know it's sittin on around 93,488 miles. Gets about 3 or so miles a month put on her...

 

And i thought I had a great link for VINs but it doesn't seem to work with any TGP's!

[mfewtrail]

53 more vins added:

I might throw up a quick list of the other two hundred something I have out of sequence as soon as I finish going through them to make sure the vin's & options are correct...

Edited December 19, 2016 by mfewtrail