Vin I.D info..Interesting?? Wiil this work here ??

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Ford: Use the VIN, Learn More
If you are a user of the Ford or Motorcraft website you know how powerful this website can be when you are looking for information to repair FOMOCO vehicles. If you are not and you have ever struggled understanding why Ford does things the way they do you need to log onto http://motorcraftservice.com and check it out. If you own an IDS scan tool be sure to use the laptop it is installed on to log into Ford's site. You will be asked to install a couple of browser add ons. One of these will allow you to connect the IDS to 2005 and newer Ford products ( I haven't had a chance to try this with Mazda. It may work with them too) and acquire the VIN and any DTCs the vehicle has. Of course if you don't have an IDS you can still manually type in the VIN.

It is very important that you use the VIN on any of the OE sites that have a VIN entry field. You will be given specific information that you would not otherwise see by selecting the vehicle from the menus. In the case of Ford you will see something Ford calls Special Service Messages or SSM. These are VIN specific TSBs that are eerily accurate descriptions of problems or warnings about servicing that specific vehicle.

You will also see the OASIS report for vehicles built about 99 up. This is the threshold of VIN specific information Ford has online. The OASIS system is Ford's information system that is used by the dealers. You will receive everything on the dealers OASIS report except the owner information and their repair orders for owner privacy reasons. Clearly Ford would not want to have a publicly available way for would be car thieves to be able to look up where a vehicle lives from its VIN. We can assume that we have this information if we are working on the car.

The valuable things you will learn include the vehicles build date, in service date, warranty end date, calibration information for the engine management system and another thing called Field Service Actions. Basically this includes recommended modifications which may or may not be covered under warranty. Since this is VIN specific you will know if these recommended FSA's have not been performed and have the opportunity to offer the repair to your customer. These could include things like the cruise control switch that catches on fire that many of you are probably aware of or a software reflash to resolve a drivability problem.

If you have not used the VIN in the Ford site yet, give it a try. You will be pleasantly surprised.