A friend of mine has a small block apart and was asking me what all the numbers cast into the front of the block inside the timing cover mean. Can anyone enlighten us? If you need a pic, I'll try to get one and post it. Thanks.
Those probably mean something to the people who cast the blocks and distribute them, but not a lot that I know of to the rest of us. The only numbers that really matter for identification purposes are the ones on the back of the block and by the p***enger side head on that pad. Those numbers in the timing cover area could be dates and shifts that the casting was done, or something similar. Don
i'm sure there was more than one pattern to cast the blocks....so it could be a pattern number , in case there is a problem and they have to go fix it.
As far as I can tell, they use some of the patterns to make the molds for several different blocks, so you'll see the last three digits of the block casting numbers that were made with that pattern. For example, you might see 010 020 509 on a block that uses an pattern that makes the 350, 307, and 400 cubic inch blocks. this relates to the old wives tale that those numbers are somehow related to the alloy of the block...but that does not make any sense, if you look at all the blocks and figure out that the numbers are indeed the last 3 digits of block casting numbers.
It's probably like the Mayan calendar thing. A couple of bored GM employees just put those numbers inside there to make us scratch our heads some day. Don
These are probably the numbers he's talking about. The three digit numbers are all the last three digits of known block casting numbers, such as 3970010 etc
Let's try to keep the wives out of the garage. We don't want them drinking all ofthe beer stash out there!
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