MTFCA Forum

There have some interesting T block posts about vin no. Identification lately and t thought I would post this one. I was going to use this block for a rebuild since it has good original Babbitt but decided on another one I had because it had a good vin number.
This one is center punched and not to good!
It’s a generator 2 valve chamber block so I’m thinking it’s about a 20 but not to sure.
Any ideas out there? What do you think
The round date stamp is smudged and a it’s not a clear casting. So???

That's pretty weird. Why would anyone do that?

Maybe 253770 ?
Why, because they do not have a set of numbers.

Check my post of Feb 8 re preserving engine numbers, and you can have the engine no you like on that block with the good babbit.

Allan from down under.

Maybe 253770?

No, not enough digits. That would be April, 1913. Add another digit on the end and you get February 1918, which makes more sense.

Looks like there could be an un-staked "1" at the end or...
maybe this number is correct as a replacement block for a 1913.
A replacement block makes more sense because that is definitely not a factory style stamping.

Somewhere near 20-25% of most groups of parts are not worth fixing. If you can strip and magna flux the blocks you have, you will be able to decide.

Casting date looks like 8-1-20 to me. So the block is a 1920 casting as you thought.

At the far right of the center punched numbers you can see the number 5. But it looks to small for the normal sized numbers that was used.
The guy who center punched the numbers could tell the story of what kind of T the engine was used for but he’s long gone.
I don’t think a Ford dealer shop would have center punched the numbers in.

Who ever center punched those numbers was a visionary they foresaw the rise of the dot matrix printer in the mid 1970's to 1980's !

Its easy enough to machine that surface. prick marks go away & put any # you want. thats nothing compared to the cost of rebabbitting.