So when would my car actually have been made?
 

I have a 1930 Phaeton which according to the Model A motor production charts the motor was made on Feb 15th, 1929. But I'm sure the car was not made on that day (seems awfully early in the 1929 year for a 1930 model?), is there any other information out there about when it would have actually went down the production line?

Thanks,

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

What's the number on the frame??


Bob

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

The guidelines and standards call out as much as 3 months after the engine was stamped it would have been placed into a car.


"Engines were placed into production vehicles up to three (3) months after assembly."

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

The best you can do is go through the Judging Standards and Plucks's frame evolution study and start to narrow it down based off of a bunch of little things here and there.

http://www.plucks329s.org/frame.htm

Remember that a lot has happened to these cars in the past 90 years and it is very hard to find unmolested examples. I'd guess that the engine is a replacement put in sometime in the car's history. You could try lifting the body to see if a frame number is visible which would give you the original engine number.

-Tim

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

First of all...what is the restoration history of your car?

Did you restore it or did someone else?

Was it restored to the MARC/MAFCA Restoration Guidelines and Judging Standards?

Was it just put together without any attention to detail? Maybe that 1929 engine is all the last person had and did not pay attention to detail.

Was it an original assembled car restored to original condition?

Why do I ask all these questions? We know nothing about your car and it is very hard to try to explain just when it came off the assembly line.

All production stopped at all Ford Assembly Plants in October 1929 for which they used up all 1929 parts and revised the assembly lines to make way for the 1930 models which were released to the public in November 1929.

There are all sorts of senarios on can look at.

One can figure out closely to about where and when ones car was assembled if it has the right factors to do so.

Pluck

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

Someone put an early 29 motor in my 30 and it still has the oil pan with the plate to give access to the oil pump. It was easy for me to figure it out as they scratched out most of the early number and stamped the 30 number below it. Could be some engine that they were using to test something with and just put it back in the assembly line at some point but most likely it has been replaced after the original cracked or started burning oil.

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

Thanks,

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

John,

OK now...so it was an original assembled car restored to original condition.

Now...what you need to do is get a copy of the current MARC/MAFCA Restoration Guidelines and Judging Standards and start looking at the different features on the car to determine a time period of assembly that is according to what is on the car or not.

You can tell an early 1930 from a mid 1930 body by looking at the placement of the cowl band.

Hopefully the body has the assembly plant code and numbers on the bodies sub frame.

Review this: http://www.plucks329s.org/pdf/studie...ND%20CODES.pdf

When engines were stamped at Dearborn, they were then sent off the one of the 32 assembly plants throught the US. as the chassis came down the line, the engine was installed and a worker looked at the engine number and stamped it on the frame.

if this 1929 engine was just hanging around the assembly plant and put into your car, then yes, it would have that engine number on the frame. Question...is the engine number the original number stamped or is it a RESTAMP? Read the above link.

This should keep you busy for awhile if you are truly interested in trying to find out your original question!...is there any other information out there about when it would have actually went down the production line?

Pluck

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

does your engine # match the number on the title?
that will tell if the engine was swapped out.....

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

Three months is likely very accurate about most time any component would be delayed for production. Charles Sorensen mentioned that a full one half of Fords storage for assembly was in rail road box cars delivering the sub assemblies to the branch plants. Engines were moved in big cradles that held them vertically to make them easier to move on and off the rail cars. After the engines were removed from rail cars, they went into a temporary storage area where they were stacked up and units were taken to the line by some form of conveyor one unit after the other for assembly line installation. The order they were kept in was not controlled so nothing went together with numerical order. If there was a slow down in production for one reason or another, things could get stacked up a bit and cause delay in use of items that would have been at the back of the stack.

All US production Ford engine assemblies were stamped at the Rouge plant after they passed the test station but they went all over the country at varying speed and distances to destination. Delays can happen with the rail lines too at times. With Ford manufacturing over a million cars a year, there wouldn't have been much room for things to set around. Most of the old timers that passed on information about this stuff back in the early years of the restoration hobby agreed that 3-months would be about the longest period any assembly may have been pigeon holed before it was used up.

This makes it much more likely that a replacement engine was installed in the car at some point. The frame number, under the left front corner of the body, will tell the tale for certain. That's where the engine number was stamped on the frame the day the original engine was first installed in the frame.

With model A cars being popular for restoration for so long, it's also possible that a later body can be mated with an earlier frame & engine or the other way around. I've seen this happen before. The model A frames are all so similar that they can easily be made to work on any year of body.

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

Yes it does.

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

It is my understanding that the practice used to be when you replaced the engine you notified DMV of the number from the replacement engine and they updated the registration, thus you cannot draw any conclusions just because the numbers match. The real answer lies in the number on the frame, which was usually not replaced.

Charlie Stephens

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

And the only way to get to that frame number is to take off the body, correct?

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

True

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

Before you go to all the trouble to take the body off even if you are thinking about it...or not...just key out the frame features and get an idea of its production time period.

Pluck

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

John
Here is what I did to look at my frame number. I took the nuts off of all the bolts for the body and fenders on the left hand side of the car. Including the hood hooks and the hood stop. Then I very carefully jacked up the body and fender about 1" in the cowl area. With the floor boards out, I was able to wire brush the top of the frame, from the inside and see my frame number. I my case it did match the engine number.

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

The engine/frame number on my 1930 AA puts it in May 1930. My AA is the Early '30 body style. The new body style came out in June 1930. So my engine made it into a chassis pretty quick.

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

Look at things on the frame that cannot be easily changed. So the fender brackets, the style of rear radius rods, since it's a 30 do you have the oval or round speedometer. Chip away from either side of the timeline and you can narrow it down.

-Tim

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

If you go through the trouble of trying to see the frame number, it might be worn away by now, covered with too much paint, or not even there to begin with as not every frame had a number.

Re: So when would my car actually have been made?
 

So here is a question I have posed several times. My pickup is a Dec 30 according to the frame number. If the engine was built and stamped in Dec 30 and it took three months to get installed and the frame stamped. It would have been March of 31 before it was built.
It has all the characteristics of a 30 but I still wonder about that scenario.