Other castings and markings

Foundry castings

Ford had several foundries in the US and around the world making different components. A simple method is used to identify which part was cast where each foundry had it own label identifying the plant the part was poured. Foundry designation would often be cast into a major cast iron component like the block, heads, intakes, center sections and more. Some casting labels are simple letters like WF or DIF others are logos like the CF insignia from the Cleveland foundry.

Some popular castings

DIF	Detroit Iron Foundry
CF	Cleveland Foundry
CCF or CCP	Cleveland Casting Products or Cleveland Foundry
WF	Windsor Foundry (Canada)
MCC	Michigan Casting Center

Cleveland or Windsor engines, what's in a name ?  

By 1970 Ford technicians had many difficulties identifying which 351 is referenced, was it the 351 with the Windsor heads or was it the new 351 with the Cleveland heads. To put to rest the confusion Ford named the engines according to the plant they where produced hence the Windsor and Cleveland names stuck. They where now called the 351W and the 351C .

As a general rule only the 351 Windsor was produced at the Windsor plant in Ontario but because the 289 and 302 had similar heads to the 351W it was also wrongfully believed these engines originated from Windsor. All 289 302 and 351W engines where where grouped in the Windsor familly and ended up being called a Windsor engines. But what's most ironic part of this story is that most small block 289 302 Windsor engine parts where in fact produced in the Cleveland foundry and not the so believed Windsor plant. 

Have you ever noticed the clock face on engine part castings. Many iron engine components like the block, intake, heads have these clock faces.

for cast iron engine parts generally 2 types clocks.

• A clock type face with 10 dots arranged in a circle, a center dial pointing to one dot, and an external index dot.

• A circle with the five numbers 1 3 5 7 9, and one external index dot.

Is it a Casting counter, does it indicate a Shift counter, is it a Time code, or something else. Its exact purpose is not well understood and even among experts there is serious disagreement but generally believed to be a Time code of some sort.

All argument have some flaws:

• Time code, shouldn't it have at least 12 different positions to represent the hours of a day, and what about AM or PM designations. 

• Shift counter, doesn't make sense having 10 shifts

• Casting counter, seems plausible and in fact would make sense if used to keep track mould usage.  But most experts disagree.

On aluminum parts such as the timing cover or 2100 and 4100 carburetors you will find another clock face casting. This casting is different from the clock dial on iron parts. The dial has 10 positions which indicate a date of manufacture.

Timing cover Clock dial date code samples

	This date comes from timing cover C3OE-6059-B. It indicated the year of manufacturer "64" and in this format the months are counted by the dots. 5 dots means "may" This part was manufactured in May 1964
	This date code is from FE timing cover C8AE-6059-B. This timing cover was manufactured in June 1969
	This date code is another SB timing cover C5OE-6059-A. Same basic format as before the number in the center indicates the year of manufacture but the months of manufacture is the last highlighted bump overlayed atop the background indicators. This timing cover was manufactured in June 1965

Engine date decoding >

Early 2100 and 4100 Autolite carburetors use a very simple date code. A letter which represents the month of manufacture and it ranges from A (January) to M (December) the I is omitted.

Somewhere around 1962 Autolite carburetors use a Clockface type date to indicate date of manufacture. Seems fairly simple to understand and a simple progression of the letter casting. Inside the a dial casting located on driver side front bowl is once again listed the venturi size but the surrounding it a clockface to represent  the date of manufacture. A dot is used to indicate the month manufacture.

Around 1964 the Autolite carburetors starts using an evolution of Clockface date format. The a dial casting located on driver side front bowl still lists the venturi size and surrounding clockface still has the month indicators but now has several dots within each month group. We are not sure how to interpret these dots but it appears to be a "week" code within a specific month. Each dot might represents a week and the date of manufacture is the number of dots (weeks) of the last month.

Disclaimer

Again we are not convinced that each dot represents a week but the basic reasoning behind this assumption is we have only seen a maximum of 5 dots within each month space, and it just seems logical to assume a progressive evolution of the date code from showing just months to also including the weeks of manufacture.

Appeal: if you have more info how to read these dots your help is appreciated.

Carburetor tag date decoding >