Rebuilds (in my experience) had the number ground off. Many of them had new
numbers stamped on (but some just had them ground off).
Same with transmissions.

I am only basing this on a half dozen VW factory rebuilds, so this may not
be the general case.

-Craig

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 5:43 PM, mark drillock <mdrillock@cox.net> wrote:

> No, the star is put there to indicate the end of the number. I assume to
> discourage tampering by someone adding more numbers. You will find the
> same thing on various VW vin# locations.
>
> Mark
>
>
> Karl Wolz wrote:
>
>> Doesn't the star indicate a rebuild?
>>
>> Karl Wolz
>>
>>
>>