Revelations about my 1957 Corvette engine!!!!

[Darryl D.]

[John D.]

Re: Revelations about my 1957 Corvette engine!!!!

Darryl, You are correct that FC is a '57 passenger car 283 with powerglide, John

[Joe L.]

Re: Revelations about my 1957 Corvette engine!!!!

When I bought this car recently the owner told me it had a 327 out of a
1967 Impala so I did not bother to look at the numbers on the engine.

Today I decided to pull a valve cover because I saw that the front of the
head had a marking that would indicate they are 1957 FI heads. When I pulled the
valve cover sure enough find a 3731539 casting number with a A 9 7 date code
which is Jan. 9 1957 which would probably be correct for my March 19th estimated
build date of the car. This all got me wondering about the engine so I check the
casting number and find it to be 3731548 which is correct for a 1957
Corvette.

Now here is the strange part, the stamped characters on the engine pad are
FI207FC, the second character is the capital letter I not 1. Now if my memory
serves me right this would be decoded as F=Flint then I207= Dec. 7th then FC=
1957 283 passenger car. That is if the I stands for the number 1, I know there
are changes for some of these characters.

I know there have been blocks that were mis-stamped with the wrong info on
them. I can not see the date code casting number on the back of the engine to
determine when it was cast without taking the ignition shielding plug wire
bracket off of the car but if the stamped date code falls in line with the
casting date this COULD be the original engine for this car except for the
suffix code question. In looking at the suffix codes for 1957 I guess it is
possible that it SHOULD have been stamped FG which would have made the car an
auto trans with 2X4s. The car now has a 4 speed which I don’t believe is correct
because of my estimated build date of March 19th makes the car too early for a 4
speed.

I know there are several possibilities here so lets hear them guys.

Daryl------

By far, the most likely scenario is that this is not the original block installed in the car. It's a replacement block donated by a passenger car. This is a VERY common scenario.