I.H. H tractor

On the h tractor how can you find the year if no tag? [email protected]

On the major casting,there are little oval casting date codes,like 7-2-X, that is July 2nd and x is 1952, but that just gives you the date it was casted, not the day it was bolted together! Y is 53 and x is 54 and so on. It started with H is 1938. And the U was not used for a full year it was the U and W used the same year.

Our HS shop teacher told us that fresh castings were put in storage for a year for the internal stresses to work out before machining. Anyone else ever hear that? When I google it I found information to back that up, says castings were stored outside for up to a year or more. So the tractor would probably be a year younger than the casting code date.

Yep, also known as seasoning. Castings move around for some time after casting and if machined too quickly they move around even more and tolorances will be lost. It makes no differance for small nonprecise parts such as a bracket but large castings for gear cases and such must be seasoned before machining.

In the last post of the linked older YT post is a link to a layout of the letters correlation to years. There is an engine number stamped on a flat area below spark plugs 1 - 2. I do not believe the 10,000 or 11,000 difference talked about in the M post applies to Hs. I know it is nice to know the year of your tractor but on those old Hs unless you have a 1939 or early 40 with a recess in the deck where the seat bolts down the rest were pretty much all the same with minimal changes throughout the serial number ranges.
Post with link to casting codes

Casting codes

So Ford had to have 40,000 blocks on hand a year before they release the pickup?

Both my 41 Ms were assembled in July 1941, and the casting codes are also July 1941, serial numbers are 1941. Others Ive had are the same way. I have some with dates that vary a month and some that vary a few months, but never a year.

GL those pictures are pretty fuzzy or at least the list is, I doubt they can be made out. In the link I posted for him he should be able to get to the same info.

One easy way to get an estimateis short or tall oil filter. Our was supposed
to be a 41 and it had a tall oil filter, neighbor had a war model and it
was the short filter. Dealers it 1948 just went be year and not serial
number. Did not know tractors has a serial number untill after we traded it
of in 1980

there are mnany things that have probably been changed so look for the cast codes thy are located several places thats the best
way to determine the yr it was built

I worked at FARMALL in Rock Island for 4-5 years, in both production assembling front axles and in Purchasing
also called Matetial Scheduling. We dealt with all but a few of IH's iron foundries, Louisville was the Big
one, Memphis, Indianapolis, IH had a nice newer little ductile iron foundry in Waukesha, WI, and until about
1970 FARMALL itself poured lots and lots of castings. We really didn't buy castings from outside foundries,
EXCEPT, the wide front axle castings on 86 & 88 series tractors was ductile iron, too big for Waukesha, had
been done at Memphis until about 1979 when we got a semi-truck load of weird greenish colored castings, yep,
from John Deere Silvis, Ill foundry about 8-9 miles due east of FARMALL, WE SAVED several hundred Dollars per
truckload just on freight.
Yes, castings move and relieve stress after machining, only 2-3 thousands of an inch, thermal treatment
and vibratory treating of castings before machining is used to normalize the castings. Most stuff on tractors
is small enough it doesn't matter. We had a quality team at a food & chemical equipment mfg company that made
huge high pressure pump housings, 5 & 7 cylinders arranged like a John Deere A and the cylinders and heads
were huge machines forged stainless steel bullets. The machine base moved a little, the head & cylinders
didn't. We put a lot of time and expense into the project just to decide it didn't effect our machine. We had
our own coordinate measuring machine, we could measure anything to.00001 inch repeatability, if it moved we
would know.