Matching dates common?

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BobShirleyAtlantaTx
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Matching dates common?

Post by BobShirleyAtlantaTx » Wed Jan 19, 2022 2:06 pm

How common is it for a15 block and head to have same casting date?
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Wayne Sheldon
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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:27 pm

A random occurrence. Probably did not happen a lot, but not all that rare either.
I have known of hobbyists that made some effort to match them up during restoration.

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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by TRDxB2 » Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:51 pm

Happenstance or construed ?
I am not that knowledgeable about casting dates (too many variations in pictures) but the head casting month seams to have a slotted screw holding the month portion in place and is not a dash. Was this done?
The casting number on the block may have an additional number after the 15 but the engine serial number is in the March (3rd month) 1916 range.
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BobShirleyAtlantaTx
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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by BobShirleyAtlantaTx » Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:22 pm

In real life, the last part of the date looks like where they secured the date tag in the molding process. And yes the date in the head looks to have been secured by a slotted screw. And then that brings up the question why is the casting of the screw not reversed? With the slot not sticking up instead of looking like a screw slot
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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Kerry » Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:33 pm

Ford didn't make a new mold every day just to change the date, they changed per day by screwing the numbered plates on.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by TXGOAT2 » Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:58 pm

I thought it was common practice to allow new castings to "age" for some time, like weeks or months, before machining operations.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:08 pm

Interesting. I had not looked closely at the serial number pad before. But there is another anomaly. As production neared the one million mark, Ford enlarged the serial number pad for the blocks on the patterns and/or molds. The earliest I have noticed the larger pads is around the Fall of1915. The smaller number pads continued to show up as Ford continued to use the already made patterns and molds with the smaller pads already in place. I have seen smaller number pads well into January of 1916.
This block has the larger number pad common for 1916. I could be wrong? But I do not think a March of 1915 block should have that size number pad. Do not ask me how or who, but I do know for a fact that it is not difficult to convert a 6 into a 5.

As for the casting dates themselves? These are typical. Molds and/or patterns had places for date numbers to be attached before the iron was poured. Several variations of attachment were used, among the most common was slotted screws. The slotted screw can show up as either a positive or a negative depending upon where in the process it was changed. The level of the numbers often varies.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:12 pm

TXGOAT2 wrote:
Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:58 pm
I thought it was common practice to allow new castings to "age" for some time, like weeks or months, before machining operations.
Another common myth as far as Ford was concerned. Other companies using cheaper mixes of iron often did need to age the castings. Ford found that a slightly costlier mix could speed up the process a lot and save a lot of money in time and handling.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by greenacres36 » Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:42 pm

My block is dated 4/14/15 and the car assembled on 4/24/15. So engine blocks must not have aged a whole lot before machining. It probably would’ve taken a warehouse a square mile in size if they aged very long before machining.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by BobShirleyAtlantaTx » Wed Jan 19, 2022 6:55 pm

You guys are right as rain. The serial number is a March 1916 not 15 I guess at some point in the past someone tried pull one over. I sure stand corrected. That’s the reason the 5 look’s funky.
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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:14 pm

I would not worry about it much. Enjoy the car!


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by kmatt2 » Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:01 pm

I would not worry about the 15 casting date and the 16 engine number. The longer number boss blocks were cast at the same time as the older shorter number boss blocks were in 1915. As the molds wore out they were replaced with longer boss molds. The shorter boss blocks would have been used up first while the numbers were under 1M by stacking the long boss blocks in bottom of the stacks ready to go to machining. I don’t think your 5 is a changed 6 in this case because the engine number would have also been changed to a 15 number. One case I can think of is a Ford dealer had a 1915 unnumbered new replacement short block in stock for a while and a customer with a 1916 T needed a replacement for a damaged block and the 1916 engine number of that damaged block was stamped on the unnumbered short block in that car.
The Model A Club has posted in UTube a Ford film of Model A motors being build. This film has a lot of shots of the casting of the blocks from packing the casting sand into the patterns, then making up the molds, then pouring blocks and stripping molds. One thing I found interesting is that all cast iron parts for the block came out of casting as a group, block, head, intake, exhaust, going on conveyor to the machine shop together. Though this was 1928 - 1931 it was very interesting. Ford could very well have cast heads and blocks from the same pour in 1915 and needed the month and day on the heads to track things if there were problems.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by George Hand » Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:02 am

As I understand it the number on the block (VIN) was stamped after the engine was completed & inventoried, depending on which Branch/Plant assembled the car, it could be weeks away from that number, as the completed engine would be assembled in Detroit & used there or shipped to a Branch. The Encyclopedia listing of dates relative to the (VIN) number is for that purpose only so because an Engine is dated x-xx-xx may not be the date the car was completed. George Hand


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Drkbp » Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:01 pm

Not matching of course but,
another date on a completed "new engine assembly" for reference if you have the engine apart.

The transmission stub shaft was dated when the transmissions were assembled.
The transmissions seem to be assembled about a week or two prior to engine assembly and numbering.

My July 1913 block was cast in June, transmission dated " 7 11 13 ", and engine numbered July 17, 1913,
in Bruce's Book.
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7 11 13
TRANS STUB SHAFT.jpg (47.57 KiB) Viewed 2166 times


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Derek Kiefer » Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:43 pm

People a lot smarter than me have said that the head numbers are not actually a date, but a reference to a mold number.
I have also seen some low heads with 2 extra digits "13" after those numbers, which all seem to coincide with 1913 style heads (taller raised Ford script)

I have always had my doubts about the mold number theory, but has it been determined that this is or is not a date?

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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Jeff Perkins » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:52 pm

My 1913 has a 2/10/13 casting date on the motor. Engine #216761 which dates to 2/27/13 and the date on the end of the mainshaft of the transmission is also 2/27/13.
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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Drkbp » Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:00 pm

Jeff,

Interesting, engine assembly that week was right on top
of the transmission assembly department. My block casting
was also about three weeks ahead of engine assembly in July.
Would seem to indicate "engine assembly" dates in the book
are accurate for the time period.

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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by George Mills » Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:59 pm

Pat,

When cast iron is poured, it shrinks as it cools, the faster it shrinks, the more residual stress it retains...

When it shrinks, there are pockets of stress, mostly random that will wait forever to be released. (Why some head get backbone cracks 100 years later without actually having rot. It's not a time bomb...it's just always there waiting to let go.

The idea of aging cast iron was to let Mother Nature sort of anneal it through rain and snow, hot and cold and the truth is, stuff aged in this way stays flatter after machining as opposed to machining near hot iron. I know for a fact about 4th place precision machining of cast iron and letting it 'season' beforehand being a solution to post-machining warp experienced with 'green' castings. It just works.

Now the irony...one of the worlds best in class gray iron foundry's is used for automotive. They pour on one day, machine on the next and report no warp (some of their product is rotors for the German car makers.) They machine the rotors to break off the crust at the foundry...don't say how many might warp but if they did they just go into the remix pile.

So I ask them were they ever concerned about post machining warp and internal stresses? The iron-monger smiled at me and signaled me to follow him. We started at the discharge end of his horizontal pouring line and he pointed to a full conveyor line that ran the entire length of the pouring line, reversed direction on another conveyor and travelled back. Total travel time post sand shake out/melt out? About two football fields. But heres the kick...the backside of the pouring line is as hot as blazes in radiated heat from the continuous live pour so the parts are actually somewhat poor-man annealed by the time they get go past the cold mold end and then reverse then to return thru just warm air and on to the debur area. My guess is that Ford must have done something similar, because A- foundries are not usually heated, and B shrinkage happens a whole lot faster in the winter months when 'air cooled'


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by TXGOAT2 » Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:43 pm

Ford was very innovative at finding ways to speed up production while maintaining quality. It may be that the block babbiting process allowed for some annealing/stress relief. I'd think the block casting would be the most likely to have issues. Good design might also minimize thick/thin areas in the casting and so promote more even cooling and shrinkage as compared to a casting with very thin and very thick areas, and careful design of the mold and cores might also allow some control of cooling rates of different parts of the casting structure. I've seen what looks like wire embedded in Ford flathead V8 blocks. I don't know if these were some kind of core support or some sort of heat sink.


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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Fri Jan 21, 2022 4:38 am

TXGOAT, FWIW, Most of the wires I have seen inside cast blocks or heads were remnants of the wire used to hold the inner sand molds together long enough to complete the pour. Most of those wire pieces were pulled out as part of the cleaning of the block or head before major machining.
Sometimes part of the wires would be exposed on the edges of the sand, and weld into the casting when the molten iron was poured in. They would pull out as much as they could in a minute or less, then leave the rest as long as it was not enough to fail QC.


Derek K, FWIW, In past discussions (must have been about fifty of them in the past twenty years? Just try to find the right two or three of them?) ( I am joking!), people that know a lot more than I do quoted information from back in the day that the numbers as pictured on the head in question were in fact month and day casting dates. And, yes, some heads (apparently mostly 1913 and a few 1912 (from memory)) did have the year following the month and day numbers. This was mostly done during the mid and late brass years. Casting dates as I recall were not on all earlier heads, and were often near the middle of the head instead of the rear.
Later heads, the high heads, rarely had casting dates on them for USA production. As I recall, some Canadian heads into the 1920s had the circle design casting dates..
Many heads also did have mold or pattern numbers or letters. I am not aware of any consistency in location or meanings.

I cannot say I know all of that for absolute certainty. But that is my firm belief.

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Re: Matching dates common?

Post by Kaiser » Fri Jan 21, 2022 8:00 am

About the remark about the screwhead not being cast in the "negative" : the small plate is screwed on the wood 'plug' or 'core' (officially called the 'pattern' ) and not on the sand mold, so will end up in the finished casting just the way it looks on the plug, chewed up slot and all.
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