Got my RV 440 on the stand today.

Needed to see what this pad is telling me, I've never been good at reading these.

I know 440
T is truck if memory is working

The 9 up front and E at the rear Im not sure about

The 21 at the bottom

And there might be a tight group three circle stamp on front of the 21 or possibly an 8?

8 21 engine assembly date, 9 T = 1979 model year, Trenton plant. 440 cubic inches. E = cast crankshaft.

T in front of the number means Trenton engine plant. So that engine is from a '79 model vehicle, 440 displacement and the E means it had a cast crank. The number in the bottom row is the engine assembly date.

If you look at the side of the block you'll find a casting date for the block and there might be a VIN stamped on a pad by the oil pan rail.

But "everybody" knows there were no 1979 440's.

True, and the font on the 9 appears to be wrong but why would anyone alter the ID pad on an engine that has no value? It does appear to be restamped but why. And of course, does it even matter? The engine isn't worth much if anything. Of course you could also ask why this thread is in the race section since it iisn't a race engine.

Its in the Race and Engine Tech section. I figured this was a technical question about an engine.

As to the 79 date, it was removed from a 79 RV in which the 440 was still available to my knowledge.

I believe there were RV's as late as '80 with the 440 but always wondered about date codes on the post-'78 RV engines.

Based on that ID pad posted it looks like Mopar sent the engines out without a date stamp and then the conversion company stamped the block with a 9 for 79 and maybe a 0 for '80? The font isn't correct for Trenton so I'm assuming it was stamped by someone else at a later date. Never seen one like that before. I assume the casting date on the side of block is '77 or '78 so perhaps Mopar put a few blocks aside and saved them for the conversion folks.

Here's a link with some good info on mopar blocks. The late model blocks look to have more meat in the main webbing area.
http://www.440source.com/blockinfo.htm

Ahh....Yeah....For those, My answer is a question:

What's the casting date?

On end-of-life specimens of this nature, personally I'm a little more comfortable with casting date for ID than the stampings.