i'm still trying to find the 350 engine code "v09013wt". nowhere can i find the suffix "3wt" and this is supposed to be the most telling part of the number. very frustrating. any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

What difference would it make if you knew .... that .... about your BLOCK?

 

There are very few suffix codes that start with a number. Are you sure it's not a poorly stamped B or some other letter?

 

There are very few suffix codes that tell anybody anything useful or of any value about anything at any time about any block (other than a "numbers-matching" Barrett-Jackson resto), because they're stamped on the BLOCK, but the parts that make one engine of any given displacement any different from any other are NOT THE BLOCK.

What would you REALLY like to know? What would you do with this "information" if you had it? Maybe there's some way to find out something USEFUL that you can actually USE for something, unlike those "codes"?

 

it'd be nice to know if it's a 4bolt without having to remove the pan.

i looked at that code over and over again to make sure.

 

Why would that matter?

THe factory 4-bolt system is designed for TRUCKS. Low-RPM, high-torque, GRUNT applications, where about the only force on anything is just, detonation trying to push the crank out the bottom of the block. In that case just adding more bolts helps which is why they put them in the higher-load trucks. But basically worthless against the kinds of stresses we here would put on any of that in a "performance" situation, where higher RPMs are involved, and things are trying to move around in all sorts of directions besides just straight down.

What would you do with that information if you had it? Maybe there's some way of lighting your path without "codes". If all you want is to satisfy some kind of curiosity, then that's something apart from "useful".

 

No casting or suffix numbers will tell you if it's a 2 or 4 bolt block. The only way to know is to pull the pan.

 

Why are you so adamant that he doesn't need to know? It's just curiosity. I bought a rebuilt short block for my truck and found it interesting that it came out of a 91 firebird or camaro. Just a piece of trivia to know.

I think that simply by looking at the design of the 90* engine, one can see that there is a considerable overall downward force placed on the main bearing caps. The sum of all the vector forces is not 0. Whether it would make any real difference to have 4 bolts instead of 2 to the OP is another matter.

 

That hits the head right on the nail.

A curiosity; interesting sometimes; amusing; might debunk some PO's "out of a Vette" BS; but actionable? useful? informative? decison-making? not really.

The fact that it's a 638 block already contains about 99.9999% of all the information about THE BLOCK that the stamping code would.

 

Funny thing is that the engine suffix on my rebuilt 305 is the same suffix that was used on 350 corvettes sometime around '70 if I recall correctly. It's not even on some of the lists out there as the late model f-body 305 that it is. So that's something to be concerned about. Suffix codes were reused and without decoding the date code, it's worthless.