Some pictures of a rather unique block I am now working on. It appears to be a rare replacement block of some sort. I guess a dealer must have replaced just the block way back. It must have been restamped at the dealer and early innards put in it. It is setup to take late or early inner parts. It is something I have not seen before, in spite of taking hundreds apart over the years. I included a standard block (left side picture) to compare. It came from Ron Fausak's stash of parts. I will be building a new engine with it very soon. It will become my new truck engine." The casting differs on the left side in about the middle. It has 1960 casting on the outside, with 64 and up casting on the inside.

left side of factory replacement bare block. note the plugged hole that they never used in production. the rear hole is for Forward Control use ( lakewood , greenbrier , rampside etc)

looking inside the block , we see that it is releived next to the cylinder openings for late cylinders / crankshaft clearances. basically , it is a very early casting on the outside (with the tapped boss for a 60 type choke ring support) with the late casting on the inside. the later (after 60-61) blocks did not have this area on the left side middle.

this is a picture of the very small type font used by whoever put this block in service. factory type size is larger