The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop What is brass tag on crankcase?

I am tearing down a 1956 Chevy 261 for cleaning and painting. When I removed the water pump and cleaned off the gunk behind it I found a brass tag attached to the crankcase. Does anyone know what this tag identifies? There is a picture of it linked below.

picture of brass tag

Too much Photobucket junk makes it impossible to see the photo.

Here is the image - without Photobucket BS, I hope.

My guess is that the tag is from a rebuild.

That is so interesting. I have never seen a tag like that affixed to a block.

Here's a similar tag, but on the valve cover. This truck was built in April '51, and being a fleet truck, was rode hard and put up wet, needing an engine within 3 years. Either that or building roads in Alaska in the 50's was tough on engines.

That's either a rebuilder's ID tag, or possibly something a fleet owner used to identify their engines for inventory purposes. I've seen similar tags attached to engines Sears sold as "remanufactured" back in the 50's. They were usually rejects from other rebuilders with big overbores and deep undersizes on the crankshaft journals. Other mass merchandisers like Montgomery Ward also sold reman engines back then.
Jerry

We used to install similar tags many, many years ago at my uncle's radiator shop. They were made out of copper and soldered to a flat area on the upper tank. Any time a radiator came in for an overhaul, a tag was applied. It simply had an abbreviation for the name of the shop and a job number. If one ever needed to research what had been done to the radiator, you could simply call the shop and give the number to find out what had been done and when.

I've seen similar tags from other shops on old radiators. Some have dates, some don't.

My uncle's shop has been out of business for over forty years, so the tag wouldn't be much good other than for novelty purposes.

Matt

Back in the 1950's there was a trucking company in Nashville called "Super Service". Their trucks ran over the Smoky mountains into North Carolina, among other routes, long before the Interstate highway system came along. They ran pug-nosed White trucks with inline six gasoline engines of some type- - - -don't remember the make, but I believe they were big Continental engines of some sort. Detroit Diesel sold them on the idea of replacing their gas engines with 2-stroke Diesels, but there was a problem- - - -the 6-71 was too long to fit the engine compartment, so they used 4-71's. OK- - -so far, so good, but the engines had to stay wound up all the time to develop enough HP to pull the mountain grades on the 2-lane highways of the day. New Detroits only lasted 100K miles before they needed an overhaul, and even with a fully equipped in-house machine shop, the best the company could get out of rebuilt engines was around 70K. They kept excellent maintenance records, and every engine had a paper trail of service and overhaul procedures. A tag such as the one in the picture would have been needed for tracking each engine in the fleet.

They also kept DC generators and regulators as matched pairs, and anytime one item was changed they were swapped as a set, and the take-offs were sent to Dad's shop for rebuilding and calibration on his Sun generator tester. They got swapped out on a time and/or mileage basis, and there were very few electrical breakdowns encountered out on the road.
Jerry

I have a similar remanufactured tag on an engine now. Rebuilt by "Aarons Reman." which is now out of business but their tag is on the side of the engine......seen lots of them over the years.

....some rebuilders tags somewhat like that which will melt if overheated. Mostly on heads but have seen them elsewhere. This is in case of a "warrantee" job being called in.