Swapping vin tag on fenders

[96Formula6spd]

So my buddy is replacing the fender on his car. He is trying to remove the vin tag off the dented fender that was the original to the car and try to stick it on the replacement. Dont know if this is legal or not. Anybody got any ideas. Can these stickers even be removed without damage?

[efficient]

faking the funk. i bet hes doing that so he can say all body parts are original and never in a crash.

[bmwstephen]

vin stickers are similar to the registration stickers provided by the DMV. once it goes on you will rip out in chunks if you try to remove it.

[nando]

I'd look into having the fender repaired if he wants to keep the VIN stickers matching. even a pretty damaged fender can be fixed by somebody that knows what they are doing.

[AndrewBird]

Why bother?

[96Formula6spd]

He just wanted to try to keep it OEM. Stock fender was rusted out. Personally I don't care but he was just trying to see if he could do it. If he can't then no sticker at all.

[AndrewBird]

If anything, I would try a heat gun and a razor blade. Might get lucky. If that doesn't work, try wetting the label. I use both methods for removing beer/wine bottle labels and it works decently well.

[agent]

Whether it can be done or not, it's shady.

[96Formula6spd]

Well he just decided to leave it alone. Taking the wrong one off was a pain in the put and it came off in 1000 pieces. So just not tag on the new fender. Those are made to come off once.

[e34john]

He just wanted to try to keep it OEM. Stock fender was rusted out. Personally I don't care but he was just trying to see if he could do it. If he can't then no sticker at all.

If he replaces it with a better conditioned fender from another e30, it will still be OEM. As you guys found it, it's pretty hard to remove in 1 piece, I tried too when I replaced mine. So now I have a non-matching numbered left fender and a dot-r right.