Chevy S.B. Water Pump 6263701 cast number A-8 cast date?
 

My water pump on my 72 Nova SS has a casting number of 6263701 and a cast date A-8. 1972 Chevy added these long style water pumps and according to online sources the casting number 6263701 was used in 1972 to 1975 year frame. My question to everyone is the cast date A-8. This is where i am confused on. My guess is the A stands for January and the 8 is January 8? There is only two letters cast here, A-8 with no year number. Did Chevy not cast year numbers in some water pumps? Again i am thinking i have a correct water pump with the casting number 6263701 which started in the 72 model year which my 72 Nova is, and then A-8 is for January of the 8th day on January? My Flint 350 engine assembled date was January 27th of 72. Do i have the correct year pump? Have you ever seen this before with two cast numbers?

Correct, no year date cast for at least some years. I just went thru finding one of these for my 73 Camaro and my rebuilder told me that there was no year cast in for 1973, so I suppose it's logical to believe that there wasn't for 1972 either. And yes, A 8 would mean a cast date of January 8th.

Makes sense Bill. I read they used this pump cast number 6263701 for 3 years. Possible that 3 year run no cast years were present. Thanks for your input. Good to see you agree too A 8 would be my application. I feel better seeing that.

There is sometimes another, larger number after the alpha-numeric month-day markings. My rebuilder says that's a mold number from the foundry :dunno:

I do have another water pump i recently purchased that has a 12 after the date. Good to know that info too. I know some of the S.B. Chevy heads had an X on them which was a foundry ID. Got this info from the late GM engineer John Hinckley.

I have one have to look at the date