Not a mechanic. Can someone please tell me where to find the motor identification number (not the VIN) on a 351W in an 83' F250. Or a good site I could go to to find pertinent info. on this year and motor? Mostly I need the motor ID. Any help appreciated. Thanks-
John

Edit... casting number

 

What are you looking for? That it really is a 351w? Or the date the engine was made?

 

I was looking for the date the engine was made. The body says it's an 83', I know it's a 351w, but so much has been replaced under the hood that I'm not sure the actual motor is an 83'. I found some numbers finally but I could barely read them. It was on the left side of the block by the (exhaust ports)? Anyways it was old and I couldn't get my head down in good enough to read but I think it says "EITE-9430-E8" but the first I might be a 1 and the 9 might be an 8 and the last digit 8 might be a B. Now I have to find the site on how to decode this again.

Edit... I think by reading the code on another site its E1TE-9430-E8
All that means to me is that its a 1981 motor in a 1983 F250. Big difference in parts? Like say I just got a brand new distributor for an 83' and it's actually an 81'

 

C=1960's
D=1970's
E=1980's

EITE-9430-E8 is 1981. That second digit is a 1.

 

But will the distributor from a 83' work with an 81' if they are both 351W?

 

Yes, as long as they are they same type. Through the 80's they had two types; The duraspark II dist which has a vacuum advance, and the electronic type that does not have a vacuum advance on it.

 

Well, the truck came with a DurasparkII ignition module with the brown grommet. I bought the distributor with the vacuum advance. The girl at Shucks said there was also a dual vacuum advance for the 83' but I figured best bet on the single since it was the only one I've seen or heard of. Thanks, the info makes it a lot easier to deal with it for a non-mechanic like myself.

 

All the Duraspark II ignition modules I've seen (even aftermarket) have blue grommets. I THINK the ones with the brown grommet are for EEC (Duraspark III?) and may not be interchangeable. Maybe someone on the forum with an EEC equipped truck can verify.

 

Well, someone told me that they tried to make a better DurasparkII and made the brown grommet which was still a II but they actually ended up making a worse product. Either way, I also have a DurasparkII with the blue grommet but the fittings don't match. At Shucks they told me my year (83') required the brown grommet, but now I find out the motor is actually an 81' so I have to research if they wired wrong or if that's also a brown grommet. It's a pain.

 

If you go to www.partsamerica.com,(which is the same as Shucks) and look up a 1983, you have three flavors of tune;
1.Normal
2.California
3.High altitude

They sell a blue one for it as well as a brown. I am going to assume the blue one is for normal, but I can't quite figure out if the brown is for high altitude or California.

Since a 351w was never installed in a truck in 1981, and you think the engine is a 1981 351w, I picked an LTD on the same sight. They list anything from a green, yellow, blue, brown, and then I saw "you must bring in module for indentification".

So if you get fed up, you could go to the junkyard and get the plugs off a car or truck that had the blue module, or wait for Perfignition to post and try to sell you a HEI unit.

 

Thanks, I'll give them a try. Seems to me the previous owner said it was originally from California. What I'm really confused to is that if it's an 81' and supposedly a 351w, nevermind. This is getting nutty. I'm gonna go out with a crayon and paper and make sure I get the casting number from the block right.

 

be aware that just because the casting numbers say
1981 DOES NOT mean that was the year the engine was installed
in by the factory
an E1 block could have been original to a 1983 vehicle

 

Here is the wiring color codes for the Duraspark II (blue grommet) Module:
1. Ig. Mod. White to Start Circuit Red/Light Blue. 2. Ig. Mod. Red to Run Circuit White/Light Blue hash. 3. Ig. Mod. Dark Green to Coil Tach (-) terminal Dark Green/Yellow dots. 4. Ig. Mod. Black/Light Green to Distributor Ground Black/Light Green dots. 5. Ig. Mod. Orange to Dist. Pickup Coil Orange/Yellow hash. 6. Ig. Mod. Purple to Dist Pickup Coil Purple/Light Blue hash. 7. Ig. Mod. Yellow not used on V8's. If yours was originally EEC then the harness between the Ig. Mod. and the Dist. was/is different and must be modified to meet the above requirements. This wiring color code list is from a 1983 Ford factory truck shop manual and is for all non-EEC engines. I am pretty sure the connectors for the non-EEC and EEC modules are different so you may have to buy new connectors or wire direct without using connectors.

 

Great, that's what I was looking for. Could you post the wiring color codes for the brown grommet too, because the connectors don't match and I'm just going to rewire direct. I mean, since the wiring is for the brown grommet, the wire colors from the blue grommet module that I want to use don't match the rest of the wiring which was originally brown grommet don't match (obviously) and the only thing I know out of all of them is that the black ground gets wired to the chassis.

Does that make any sense? I'm learning as I go. Thanks

 

I really don't know anything about the brown grommet version. If it's for the EEC ignition system it won't work with the Duraspark II distributor because the initial timing is obtained from the crankshaft sensor and modified by the EEC to a usable form. The EEC module has Red (Run) and White (Start) wires on one connector which I think is the same as Duraspark II and has three wires on the other connector (which is different from the Duraspark II connector that has five (Yellow not used on V8's). The EEC module Dark Green goes to the Dark Green/Yellow dots wire to the coil Tach terminal. The EEC module Black/Light Green wire goes to a Black/Light Green dots ground wire. The only other EEC Ignition Module wire is Orange which was connected to the EEC itself via an Orange/Yellow hash wire. This was for the timing circuit pulses generated by the EEC and sent to the EEC type Ig. Mod. If your brown grommet module doesn't have a Purple wire (i.e., it only has a total of five wires then it is not a Duraspark II module. If it has seven wires like the blue grommet then it may work with the Duraspark II distributor. I don't know if it will work as a direct replacement for the blue grommet version. P.S., If you originally told the parts counter man you wanted an Ig. Mod. for an '83 with 351 then he would have naturally sold you an EEC Ig. Mod. In '83 only the 300 six and 460 V8 used Duraspark II. Both the 302's and 351's (and I think the V6) used EEC.