Can anyone share these date codes..Old car guy but always end up back to Oldsmobiles. Do fine with 455s but these are like trying to read a pontiac motor. C heads are on the engine too. It's supposed to be to a numbers matching 67 442. Thanks

 

What are you trying to match them to? There was no VIN derivative stamped on the engine until 1968.

 

Those are C head casting numbers, a stamped 442 67 engine production number with some other number below it, and a 400 E block casting number. There are no date codes here. If you want a date code, go look by the distributor hole in the top side of the block. There will be a cast 3 digit Julian date there. That will tell you when the block was cast. The cowl tag will tell you when the car was made. The engine has to be older than the car, and shouldn't be older by much.

67 cars were prior to the 1968 VIN laws requiring derivatives, thus they are not subject to "being numbers matching" in the way one traditionally means it. Both the VIN, and the engine production number, were on the protectoplate. If that is still owned with the car, one can determine if the passenger head, at least, is original as the car will "match" the protectoplate. Most people, however, are simply ignorant and think all cars were vin matching always.

In case anyone cares, most engines of new cars today are not numbers matching. The industry was able to sunset convins and vin derivatives because it is so easy to store computer records of production information these days, and they are stored with the sales department of each OEM for a decade or so then discarded once cars are past peak theft risk. (Edit: to clarify, I mean that the production number of an engine and the vin of the car can be saved on a computer file which is kept for a decade by the OEM, thus you don't need an additional number (a vin) on a part that has a serial already because it is already correlated. Now, things that don't have part serials, like window glass, will often get vin etched)

 

Thanks bangscr and koda, very informative. I bought it as the guy said it was numbers matching. I would have bought it if wasn't and did but was checking it out and was like...what the heck do these numbers mean.. Not like the 70s cars or like Koda said 68 and newer

 

Yes, as Koda pointed out, it's a term that gets thrown around a lot, often by people who are trying to sell cars and have no idea what it means.

 

Unless it’s a Fremont car Koda. Then you’re looking at about 4-8 weeks for engine delivery time out to California from Lansing.

 

Good point. I forget how long they took to do things.

 

Most people who throw around the term "numbers matching" have no idea what it means. For Oldsmobiles, it means that the VIN derivative stamps on the engine block and trans case MATCH the VIN of the car. Oldsmobile didn't start stamping the VIN derivative on these parts until the 1968 model year. Prior to that, Olds used unit numbers (a serialized production number) on the engine and trans. These were not derived from the VIN but the Protect-O-Plate tied these unit numbers to the VIN, so if the P-O-P is available, you can "match" those numbers to the VIN. The whole point of "numbers matching" is to prove that the engine and trans are original to the car, but that's kind of meaningless if most of the parts have been replaced with aftermarket anyway. Note in the photos you've posted that the engine has ARP head bolts, so the engine has obviously been apart and who knows what parts are inside it now. More to the point, since the engine unit number was stamped on the end of the passenger side head (the stamp in your second photo), even having the P-O-P only proves that one head is original. This is the case on my 67 Delta 88, which has a non-original 455 short block and a replacement head due to a crack. But it has a "numbers matching" engine because I was able to save the one head with that engine unit number stamp. Needless to say, I don't lose a lot of sleep over this.

And for future reference, here is an example of how an engine VIN derivative stamp "matches" the VIN on a 1968-newer Olds.

 

Joe, for 1964-67 P-o-P's, I've only seen an engine unit number and the transmission type, e.g., "S4" for a four-speed manual. Do some P-o-P's also show a transmission unit number?