Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
This seems far fetched, but we have what otherwise appears to be an original small block motor for a 1967 BUT the casting date is Dec. 20, 1966 and the Assembly date on the pad is December 21, 1966. Is it conceivable that they poured a block on one day and assembled the engine the next day??? Maybe right before Christmas they were pushing things out? What seems to be a more normal gap?
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Gordon Andrus
Houston Corvette Service, Inc.
713-896-0119 -
Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Hi Gordon,
If you search the archives you will see that this is in fact possible. Others have posted of having a block cast and assembled in the same day. This is unusual but was know to occur. -
Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Gordon,
See the second similar thread below. It is possible to have the same casting date and engine assembly date on a smallblock.Jerry Fuccillo
1967 327/300 Convertible since 1968Comment
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Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Gordon
I am curious what VIN the car is as I own an original L79 small block 67 coupe that is a California car. It's VIN is 69XX and engine assembly was I believe Dec 13, 1966. Not sure if the info helps you at all, but figured I would chime in....Comment
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Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Many, many years ago (don't ask how many and I don't even want to think about the passing years) I worked in a gray iron foundry and my boss said the best thing you could do for the finished product (the engine block in this case) was to throw the raw casting out in the plant yard and leave it rust for six months to a year. The time element was (is) needed for all the stresses to work themselves out before the block is machined. That way any core shifting, main bearing web alignment, etc. is going to be stabilized and no further stress relieving changes will occur. Always seemed like good advice to me and I've often wondered how machining a green casting like the factories did affected engine durability and power development. Course I've also read that it is pretty amazing how much a block will shift/twist on a dyno (or in the car) when pulling hard. Something like corner to corner on the block of somewhere in the vicinity of a 1/16" to an 1/8"--hard to believe, but if my memory.......is........correct.
WAG
1966 Bowtie coupeComment
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Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Does this imply that the bolck was cast, cooled, cleaned up, machined, transported to the engine plant for assembly, the engine assembled and the final step of putting the assemble date on the block ast the end of assembly on the same day or the next day? Seems strange.....Bruce
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Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Yes Bruce........seems kinda hard to rationalize how things would move that quickly. Also hard to understand why Chevrolet didn't have things better organized between the various production steps necessary in building an engine from raw "pig iron" to finished engine ready for gas and anti-freeze in St. Louis.....yes it wasn't in St. Louis but it was completed in Flint ready for shipping and all on the same day or the next day. But still people are saying it did happen. Sometimes I wonder how much the unions screwed up management's planning schedules and product flow.
WAG
1966 Bowtie coupeComment
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Re: Casting Date and Assembly date for a 1967
Bruce -
The block was only rough-machined (locating holes/lugs) at the foundry, and all the rest of the machining was done at the engine plant. All of the steps in the engine production process (casting through shipping from the engine plant) took place at 300 engines per hour; they made 5,500 engines per day at each engine plant, with a captive internal fleet of trucks carrying the castings (55,000 iron castings per day - ten per engine) from the Saginaw Foundry to Flint V-8, 24 hours per day.Comment
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