Date Codes

I have found a '66 manifold with a casting code of

following

production then.

because my

A car sold new on October 11, 1965, should have no date codes later than about late August 1965. But if your dad was the original owner and he's sure that the manifolds were never changed, what are ya gonna do? All kinds of anomalies could happen with these cars. It could be that on September 9, 1965, old Rufus at the foundry put the wrong year digit in the mold before they started pouring the iron that day. At the time nobody really gave a s**t, no one had any idea such an anomaly would ever matter to anyone, and life went on. As another example: Laurie S. of this NG, who is the original owner of a '68 coupe, gets grief at every judging because her dealer put a square bezel radio antenna on her car, and the MCA judges insist that nothing but round ones were ever used.

My guess is they went to the 67 date stamp in calendar year 67. I think a date stamp has more to do with when it was made and not what model year car it was going on. In case a bad batch is discovered, they'd want to know how to ID which units were made during a specific day...some date stamps even specify which shift it was.

DP Pics of the cars:

Exactly correct. The date code is the date the part was made, including year, month, and day. To get a correct date coded part, look for a date code from ~1 month before the build date of the vehicle.