Hey guru's...

I was at a swap meet recently and was looking at several blocks. I saw this and didn't understand why it was like this...

The assembly stamping on the pad looked normal, but the vin stamp which was on the rough cast area by the oil filter was crossed out. Then almost overlapped was another VIN stamp.

Unfortunately I didn't have a camera. Why would someone restamp a block like this? Funny thing is, the overlapped stamp looked like a factory stamp, not a restamp.

Any input?

We were in a rush so I couldn't spend much time... and the block looked in "fair" shape, obviously hadn't been in a car in some time.

That's the way the factory corrected a misstamped VIN when they caught it. They "X'd" out the wrong one and then restamped the correct one. The wrong stamp should not be very different numericaly then the replacement stamp. You would never find a 19N501100 stamp X'd out and a 19N686789 VIN restamped next to it. You might find a 19N501110, or 19N501002 etc.

Thanks Mark

I had never really paid attention to casting dates or VIN stampings until fairly recently, but had never seen anything like this.

That explains it. Thanks for the info.

Why would a block have an incorrect VIN stamp? The stamper forgot to change the stamp... or because of mechanical reasons/delays?

Because people worked on the assembly line. smile.gif