Junkyard Engine Spotter's Guide

Sources
While compiling this spotter's guide, we relied on several excellent books loaded with info about engine identification. For the popular brands like Chevy, Ford, and Mopar, there are many books available. As a result of their tremendous popularity and the availability of good factory records, part and casting numbers for Chevrolet engines are particularly well documented. A few of our favorites are MSA-1's series of pocket-sized part and casting number guidebooks and Alan Colvin's Chevrolet By The Numbers series published by Robert Bentley. Other useful books are High Performance Ford Engine Parts Interchange, by George Reid, and Ed Staffel's Small-Block Chevy Parts Interchange Manual, both published by CarTech.

Information is tougher to come by for Buick, Olds, and Pontiac, but we gleaned all we could from Pete McCarthy's book, Pontiac Musclecar Performance 1955-1979, Dennis Mothershed's Oldsmobile Numbers Swap Meet Guide, available from Dick Miller Racing Inc., and Steven Dove's Guide to Buick Performance Engines, which can be ordered from Poston Enterprises. We also picked the brain of Cadillac Larry Kruzick of Cadillac Motorsports Development. Check the source box for more on ordering these books.

By Matthew King

Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!