briarpatch

My brother and I recently bought a 1950 Chevy 5-window truck. The owner had built the truck (never finished) many years before. He had installed a 283 engine that his friend had removed from a 1957 Corvette. The casting number is 3731548 and the stamped number on the front of the block is F50IF. In checking all the Chevy number guides, this number doesn't compute. The I would make more sense if it was a 1 (number one) instead of the letter I. Did Chevy sometimes use the letter I in the place of a number 1? Any idea what this engine is? Thanks for any help you might provide.

JohnZ

That's a '57 Chevy V-8, but it's not from a Corvette - it's originally out of a '57 283 2-barrel Powerglide passenger car; all Corvette engines had a 2-digit suffix following the date code, and passenger car engines had a single suffix character after the date code.

F = Flint V-8 Plant
5 = May
0I = 1st day
F = 283 2-barrel Powerglide

The "I" character was almost always used instead of the "1" character, per Chevrolet Engineering direction to the engine plants in 1957.