12 replies to this topic

[oldoily]

hi out there does anyone know how to read the date codes on farmal castings eg farmall H trans casting 8 13 L but the 8 i am sure is a back to front B another casting has the ? reverse B 28 L are they date codes at all it would be great to find out as one of my M's (45) has a made in aust sticker on the casting but what appears to be an american part no any help would save my sanity thanks.

[axial_al]

Had an old IH dealer tell me once that for the letter series, the cast date code is month, day and the letter at the end stands for year when you add it's number in the alphabet to 1930. Hence, the letter L would be 12 added to 1930 (or 1942). I have looked at a lot of these date codes over the years and they do kind of correspond to the actual year of the tractor. One needs to keep in mind that over they years a casting or two could have been changed out from a donor tractor. The serial plate is still the best indicator for the year of manufacture; but that casting could be changed out too. I don't know about the tractors assembled overseas...were the castings shipped from the US? Guess I may have muddied up the waters even more. Good luck.

[1940 M]

I always thought the first number is the month, the second number is the day, and the letter after them is the year in which it was cast, not when the tractor was put together. That's why you will have different parts with different casting dates.

[MnRed]

Another way to determine the year, the letter "Z" stands for 1964. Then you can count backwards. Ray

[Farmall Power]

Another way to determine the year, the letter "Z" stands for 1964. Then you can count backwards. Ray

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dont you mean 1954 Ray ?
jeremy

[Dr._EVIL]

Another thing to keep in mind is the day the casting was molded and poured is one thing. Takes a couple days to shake-out the molds and clean the castings and seal them. Then they have to be machined. Then they go to the assembly line to be assembled into the final tractor. My Super H has all the major castings on it still. Most are Dec. '53 and a few are Jan.'54. Tractor final assembly was 1-7-'54 supposedly. but it seems to Me one front wheel was cast in Oct. '53. It must have gotten lost in the foundry for 2-3 months!

[Bob M]

OK......Here is a letter code/year cross reference (thanks to Guy Fay for publishing...):

A - '31
B - '32
C - '33
D - '34
E - '35
F - '36
G - '37
H - '38
I - '39
J - '40
K - '41
L - '42
M - '43
N - '44
O - '45
P - '46
Q - '47
R - '48
S - '49
T - '50
U and W - '51 (note the letter "V" was skipped)
X - '52
Y - '53
Z - '54
A - '55
B - '56
etc...

Note that standard practice is to let raw castings "season" anywhere from a week to a month or more before finish machining. Also often foundaries poured particular parts in batches. E.g casting two months worth of axle housings one day, a large batch of wheel hubs another day, etc.

Thus component casting date codes generally precede a tractor's actual date of assembly by several weeks or months.

[MnRed]

You are right, Jeremy. The old fat finger struck again. Ray

[Colin]

I though i had seen a V code once but maybe i imagined it. and something ive been trying to figure out, how did they get it to work out that 'A' just happend to be on new model line of tractors! like the 400s etc.
i seen a wd6 this year that had an actual '48' instead of a letter. none of our tractors are like that

[super-h pap]

oldoily
thanks for posting i have going to post the same . but i keep forgetting
to everyone else thanks for the info

Pap