Team Chevelle would be the place to ask this question. They love to argue the fine points of what the union worker was thinking at the time it was putting the hand stamp dies in the holder. You could have gotten a worker that needed glasses or had had a few glasses of alcohol containing beverage for his last meal. Since all of these stamps were was done by hand anything is possible (I'm still waiting to find the motor app that reads "ELVIS IS ALIVE").
Finding a letter I substituted for a numeral 1 is very common. They were stamping these motors at a rate of 180 an hour, so dies wore out over the span of a shift, or could have been dropped behind benches or under benches necessitating a substitution. Just like setting type by hand you where reading the dies upside down and backwards. Mistakes (called Typos) happened. I question why you would be using a 1969 396 instead of a 1970-'74 454 short block with open chambered oval port heads. After you deck the block you can stamp it "MERRY XMAS" if you want; or have it state any number and letter combination you want. After all numbers are only important if they are going into a numbers matching car.
Back in 1969 I bought three 396 blocks that where sold to me as 427 blocks and the motor app in the identification pad had been restamped to make me cough up $250 for a pile of scrap iron (all 396 short blocks went to Japan to make Datsuns and Toyota cars in 1969 with only the heads having any value at all).
Big Dave
Finding a letter I substituted for a numeral 1 is very common. They were stamping these motors at a rate of 180 an hour, so dies wore out over the span of a shift, or could have been dropped behind benches or under benches necessitating a substitution. Just like setting type by hand you where reading the dies upside down and backwards. Mistakes (called Typos) happened. I question why you would be using a 1969 396 instead of a 1970-'74 454 short block with open chambered oval port heads. After you deck the block you can stamp it "MERRY XMAS" if you want; or have it state any number and letter combination you want. After all numbers are only important if they are going into a numbers matching car.
Back in 1969 I bought three 396 blocks that where sold to me as 427 blocks and the motor app in the identification pad had been restamped to make me cough up $250 for a pile of scrap iron (all 396 short blocks went to Japan to make Datsuns and Toyota cars in 1969 with only the heads having any value at all).
Big Dave
