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What's the general pattern regarding lead time for an engine? Say the car was built April 8, 1968 (St. Louis - if the assembly line matters) - would the block have a casting date two weeks-ish earlier? A month?
Yep, LIFO. (Last in, first out) they didn't rotate their inventory like they do at the grocery store. Could be a few weeks to a few months prior to the assembly date.
I believe there are a few things that factor in here…. The cast, cast, cast-stack, stack, stack certainly plays a part. Worked in an iron foundry, seen this first hand. Don’t get too caught up in casting dates on blocks. Pay more attention to the engine’s assembly date stamped into the engine block for the appropriate model year. Unless a block has been restamped, I guarantee the casting date will precede the assembly date. So it seems the time window between engine assembly and scheduled production date would matter most for a ‘correct dated cylinder block’.
Question for anyone that may have an answer/was there-
Did Chrysler have multiple engine assembly plants? Did Mound Road only serve the Detroit area auto assembly plants? Did St. Louis have engine assembly? Could there be additional time lapse if engines were trucked to St. Louis from Detroit?
I have a Lynch Road built ‘67 GTX- scheduled production was 9-13-66, engine assembled on 9-6-66. The block was cast on 4-25-66.
My ‘68 RR (also Lynch Rd.) Scheduled production 11-9-67. Engine assembled 11-6-67. Haven’t looked at a casting date yet, but I know it will precede both of those dates as it is a numbers matching engine/trans.
I sold a 1974 440HP engine from a totalled charger (this was in 2012)and the cast date was June of 1971.Chrysler clearly had a lot of leftover blocks, as the vin# was correct for the charger. It was also a forged crank engine.
I still have the 489 Suregrip from that car.