Upper Distributor Plate
 

A friend was looking at a number of upper distributor plates he had collected over the years and noticed that some have a letter and number stamped into them like K1 for example. Is this a date code like the starter bands have? If so what is the code?

Thanks in advance - Hunter

Re: Upper Distributor Plate
 

Could very well be a date code. The coil on my car has a code of 3K which is March 1930. If it is a code it would be Jan. 1930.

Re: Upper Distributor Plate
 

Never seen a code on a plate before. I will have to check when I get a large group of NOS ones in the next few days.

Re: Upper Distributor Plate
 

Of the numerous upper plates I have recently cleaned, I only noticed that the 3 Autolite marked ones had a code (1K, 4K and 2L), I didn't see any code on the unmarked or SP plates. The plate that came out of the distributor which was original to the car had the 1K (Jan 1930?). I believe this would be correct for that car since it is an early Feb 1930 car.
This drives the next question - were the distributors sent by the manufacturers to Ford as a completed assembly?

Re: Upper Distributor Plate
 

That would make sense as the bottoms were stamped by the manufacturer on most of them.