I need to restore my VIN plate

Question:

My body shop sand blasted the riveted VIN plate on my door frame and took off the black painted lettering on the plate, leaving the stamped VIN portion. I have another plate off of a different vehicle revealing the correct painting and print. Do you know who can repaint the lettering on my damaged VIN plate?

Answer:

You don’t say what kind and year your car is and that could be relevant as there are marque-specific specialists who reproduce VIN plates for certain cars and one of these may be able to restore the lettering on your plate.

As an alternative, you can have a graphic artist make very precise artwork (what artists call a “mechanical”) for the printed portion of the VIN plate using the undamaged plate you have. Take the artist’s file to a company that manufactures rubber stamps and have them make a stamp that you can use to restore your VIN plate.

I’m not sure what state the sandblasted plate is in but it sounds as though you may need to polish or tumble it a bit to get rid of the surface texture the blasting left behind.

Once the plate’s surface is restored, lightly coat the stamp with paint and stamp away. The beauty of this is that if it doesn’t come out good enough, you can simply wipe the paint off and try again.