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RVF - determining date of manufacture

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 11:33 am
by dorkshoei
Is there any information on the frame of an RVF (1994) that identifies the month and year of manufacture?

I believe the VIN will be 11 digits and something like NC35-1004702 which decodes as
N (upto 400cc)
C (street)
35 (production number)
1 (version)
0 (series)
04702 (serial number)

In my checking it seemed that the version/series digits of the VIN were always 10 for the RR (1994 1995) and 11 for the RT (1996 1997 1998) so there is nothing that would denote year of manufacture.

Re: RVF - determining date of manufacture

Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2019 10:46 pm
by JZH
The 1 is for Japanese domestic model; 2 would be for an export model.
The next two digits in the Frame Number sometimes seem to follow a pattern, starting with 00 for the first year of production, then 05 for the second year, and 10 for the third year, but with bigger bikes the sequence seems to be 0, then 1, then 2, then 3, etc. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a consistent method. You can see some examples here: https://www.vsource.org/VFR-RVF_files/B ... fopage.htm

If you have access to the Honda Parts Catalogues, you can read directly which Frame and Engine Numbers were the beginning and (sometimes) ending ones. There is no way to know the month of manufacture, unless it happens to be specified on some sort of VIN plate riveted to the frame (US models have this). Apart from that, only Honda knows...

Ciao,

JZH