Engine Assembly Date?

[M W.]

Hi,

I am unfortunately having to replace my original distributor ID band because it somehow broke apart and fell off. Old age, stress whatever but now comes the part I hate. Spending money for something I already had. Anyway the parts houses specify an need for assembly date information and I am wondering where do I find that correct info? Any help is appreciated.

Regards,

Craig
#36551

[William C.]

Re: Engine Assembly Date?

Distributor was installed at engine build, so a week or two before your engine assembly date would work out fine. If it is a high performance engine, most of those distributors were built in batches, so it might help to look at a car with the same hp engine built in a similar timeframe to your engine if you want the untimate answer. Otherwise, the couple of weeks before the engine will suffice.

[Joe L.]

Re: Engine Assembly Date?

Craig-----

The reason that these distributor tags break and fall off is usually caused by the fact that one or more characters of the original stamping were too heavy and nearly cut through the aluminum band. This causes a very great "weak spot" in the band and, you might say, it's "hanging by a thread" from day 1. Over time, the "thread" breaks from normal vibration and movement and the tag falls off. It's not an uncommon problem, at all.

[Norris W.]

Re: Engine Assembly Date?

As far as the question about assembly date info, if the car has THE original engine, it's located on the pad on the right front of the block. (passenger side) For instance: from my '62 F0613RF means Flint June 13.

I just bought a missing one for a '63 from Corvette Central and the only information they wanted was the complete Vin number on the car.

[M W.]

What color band for a 64 300HP *NM*

[Verne Frantz]

Re: Engine Assembly Date?

Craig, I've put off asking this question for a long time............why don't you just use the dates and colors off of your original broken tag to order your new repro????? If it's that important to you now, I'm SURE you've already noted the details on your ORIGINAL!

[M W.]

Re: Engine Assembly Date?

Vern,

Great question but I am guessing you didn't read my entire post where it mentions the fact that the band has fallen off. Means gone...lost...unknown whereabouts...can't find..etc. This is why I was needing that particular info. I actually was looking through my judging guide last night and found all of my info from my original band written there during my restoration work. I guess I wrote it down to make sure it was correct. The only reason for wanting to know band color is because the parts houses list two different colors. Black and red. For some reason I only thought they came in a thin aluminum grey.

Cheers,

Craig

[Wayne M.]

Probably red band (out) silver side (in)

Based on this original April 30th 1964 dated (see dental mirror image 4_C_30) 1111060 -- L76 with K66. There were about 580 of these installed in MY 1964, and about another 750 in 1965, all for 365hp engines. Like Bill C. says, if they produced a batch of (say) 100 at a time, You would expect to see this same date for this particular L76/TI combo for at least a month of car VINs.

Have no idea why the catalogs would offer a black band.

[M W.]

Thanks Wayne. *NM*