Looking at several posts, photos and David Wise's judging guide I'm not finding any really good examples of original Axle Stamp fonts. The photos David shows in the book appear to be off cars that were restored.

Does anyone have really good photos of original ebody 8 3/4 or Dana Axle Stamping? Just looking for original clean stamping photos.

This photo is off a 1970 Challenger R/T (LA build) that I was able to clean up and get a good photo. It appears that it was a foam or rubber stamp and the 0 does not look like what is shown in David's book.

If we can get enough clean font photos I will build an exact font and share with everyone.

Original examples are all over the place, Different plants, different people putting them on, etc. etc.

What you find on your own car is the best reference.

This one is from a March built 1970 Hamtramck Valiant 8 3/4;

Where the axle assemblies put together and stamped at the final assembly plant or at another facility and shipped to final assembly as drum to drum sub assemblies?

The font on those stamps seem fairly consistent. The amount a paint, how hard they were applied, the amount of smearing, etc seem to be the bigger variables.

A-body rear end

Another A-body rear end.

Steve, do you know the year and plant those A-body rears came from?

The plant where they were put into a car on final assembly?

Or the subassembly plant were the actual drum to drum rear end was assembled and stamped with the identification number?

The rears are obviously swap meet items. Just showing examples of application variability in the stamping.

same font of stamps on that part of housing show across body styles and final assembly plants. Not saying they were all the same. It's not like one place just made E-body 8 3/4 and not for other body styles.

According to the 1970 TSB linked to below, all but the 9 3/4" Dana rears were assembled by Chrysler. It does not say exactly where they were assembled, but it does show all the BC numbers (paint stamped tube number that appears on the broadcast sheet) for the 1970 model year.

http://www.hamtramck-historical.com/images/TSBs/1970/D70-3-2%20page1.jpg

http://www.hamtramck-historical.com/images/TSBs/1970/D70-3-2%20page2.jpg

http://www.hamtramck-historical.com/images/TSBs/1970/D70-3-2%20page3.jpg

http://www.hamtramck-historical.com/images/TSBs/1970/D70-3-2%20page4.jpg

Want to contribute my findings to see if they will get you any closer to finding correct font. I have looked everywhere for created fonts but have come up with nothing.

Just for you Cody!

70 440+6 RR with less than 30k miles. Never apart. LA built.

Times New Roman characters. 7/8ths inch tall. That works for me. Distortion from amount of ink, surface smoothness, pressure etc etc affect numeral width and overall appearance in various ways. Of course you want it to look good but ledgible was all that was necessary for the line therefore I have never really cared to much if the stamp looked flawed some. Take care pal.

I came across a font that is pretty close I think and wanted to post a sample with 0-9 and a couple of letters. The font is called Cheltenham Ultra. I got Cheltenham from another post on here but think that this one more closely resembles what the factory used.

Thoughts?

Count me in once you get there! I am ready to detail my LA built 'Cuda

Thanks for all the help everyone. After lots of font matching I ended up making my own. I starting with Cheltenhm BdHd BT and fixed some things so it was a better match. Like 70Mopes said, there is some wear, distortion and pressure that can change the look from axle to axle. Since the factory stamps were used a lot they most likely wore down. After I finished the design of the font set I ordered some stamps to test. They look fantastic!

I made small changes to the Cheltenhm BdHd BT font to account for the wear and over use an original stamp would have had. The set of fonts I built has .02 contour so they look more correct. Also, some fonts (like Cheltenhm) have larger numbers (compared to the letters) designed in to them. So I also adjusted the letters so it matched the factory and the numbers & letters are consistent. Overall it's a super nice match. Best I've seen so far. Here's a photo of the done set of letters and numbers.

Email me and tell me what letters and numbers you need for your project and I'll set them up in single JPEG files so you can have stamps made. I used http://www.rubberstamps.net/Art-Stamps.aspx and they did a nice job for a really good price.

Hope this helps. Good luck and please keep sharing information. It's good for the hobby.

Great job Cody. I'll be emailing you my numbers and letters. Appreciate the hard work and sharing with us all.

Can anyone help me determine what the missing number may be or it's meaning in front of the 2?

Had a question about dots vs dashes.

I'm not 100% sure and still collecting information about each. I've seen a lot of stampings now and one thing seem consistent. They stamped them fast when they stamped it. As long as it was legible it was good enough. And that changed the look of the stamp a lot from one axle to another. There's also a good chance that there was more then one set of stamps. I would use whatever was on your car as the first and most important reference.

I've found them where they looks like clear dots and where they look like clear dashes. I try to look and see if the stamp is perfectly clean or smeared before looking to see if it's a dot or dash. The photo attached is of a 70 T/A Challenger rear end. Someone had painted it early on in it's life and when I cleaned off the old paint I could see a very nice clear image of the stamping. It looks like a dot. That dot was on the 3rd member. The other photo is of what looks like a clear dash. It was on an A body housing (from autoxcuda post above). Maybe the housings have more dashes used and the 3rd member is where they used a stamps set with a dot. Might have been a different set and guy stamping them. This is just a guess at this time and I'm still collecting original photos to build a better database.

Use your original stampings as your reference first.

Here are a couple of pics off my 69 Swinger.



Roger and Frank have some good pics here as well.... Click Here

To my eyes the Bookman Old Style looks pretty close. Below see pictures from my 71 340 Cuda with a SPD of 3/31 and also my first pass at doing some artwork to get stamps made. On my axle the "G" is not legible, if you go to Roger Gibson's website he has some pictures of a 71 charger built 4/22 and the "G" in this font looks pretty close. I didn't post the picture here because I didn't want to infringe upon any possible copyright, also if you're interested enough to be reading this post there are some good references pictures there as well.

To do the artwork I use the true-type font in Autocad. What is nice about Autocad is that you can change both the height and width independently. This is printed using a 7/8" text height and 75% width factor. What I am going to do is print this out one to one and match it up to the axle and make some adjustments, also keeping in mind that the letters may get bigger when stamped because of rolling the flat stamp over the round axle tube.

Mike Afflerbach

Cody - I just re-read your original post back on 6/21/15, and I see you are also asked for Dana 60 axle stamps. I've been researching Dana 60 details for many years, and have several pics of unrestored Dana's. Here's a few. If you need more reference info, let me know.

The last pic is my car. I had a stamp made to exactly match the 081 stamp on the passenger axle tube. When I cleaned off the old paint/dirt on the housing, the 081 was slightly smeared when it was stamped, so I duplicated that look.

Rob

If anyone wants the Artwork for the 8-3/4 Rear Axle Stamps, I have uploaded them so you can download them for FREE.

Mopar 8 3/4 Rear End Stamp Artwork Free

I'll be uploading the Dana 60's stamps and others soon too.

Thank you for the effort, this is a great service and will help a lot of folks.