Re:Pinto engine codes
2019/05/26 20:29:22
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Might be a bit difficult to take the decoding religiously.
These cars were manufactured with a high level of human labour.
Miss hits and errors in stamping were common place.
I own two RS2000's both assembled at Homebush in the last two weeks of December 1979. The vehicle serial codes show the cars were assembled 110 vehicles apart. This was confirmed by the manufacturing date stamps on many of the components of each of the Australian suppliers (eg wire loom, seat belts etc).
From what I understand the capacity of Homebush was approximately 100 vehicles per day. So the cars were only a day or two apart.
One of the RS2000's has an EB (German manufacture) block and head. Both matching casting dates of December 1978.
The second RS2000 block and head has no manufacturer markings (as usual). The block has casting code 5 K 5, which by the decoding principles shows is possibly 5th November 1975. There is no evidence of tampering or renumbering, or re-machining of the serial number landing area to re-stamp a new compliance code. Documented RTA searches show the engine block was never changed. Past owners (reliable) claim the car was in continual storage as a wreck from early 1992 when I purchased it 7 years ago. So I can't see any motivation for anyone to pull a swifty with the engine serial numbers.
Both serial numbers stamped on the blocks exactly match the chassis number. Fonts, sizes, alignments etc clearly are Ford.
I have a long history in engineering. One of the many things I have learned over the years is the Germans and the Eastern European countries in the old days simply chucked all of their freshly made castings (called green castings) out into the open paddock in open weather (continual hot/cold) in a huge pile to age and anneal (normalise and reduce internal stress) for several months prior machining. So even though the EB block and head decode to casting manufacture date of 1978 this would be correct for a 1979 manufactured vehicle because to the annealing period, the machining and engine assembly period, packing, shipping time to Australia (by ship), unloading, unpacking, and storing and then assembled into a vehicle, then the parked up in storage on "The Hill" at Homebush awaiting sale, and then more time doing the new car pre-delivery and shipping to the new owner. So 12 months could easily be realistic. Research shows both cars were registered in the first week of January 1980 so both were manufactured and quickly delivered to their doting first owners.
As Chuff commented on what he has seen: I have also seen several 2 litre engine blocks without the date of manufacture cast into the block as shown in the previous photo.
It is well known the EB castings were manufactured in Germany.
But which country were the non EB castings manufactured? There is no identifiable manufacturer or common code from what I can see.
:)