Cub identification

[William Dellinger]

I just acquired two Farmall cubs. The first has a proper metal tag and is a 1952. The other has no tag, but appears older because--magneto instead of starter etc. I seem to recall there was someone here or elsewhere who kindly offered to help date older Cubs where the metal plate is missing.

The numbers are 11 1B R stamped on a metal tag and affixed with screws, and 251341R2 is cast into the engine block. Both on the L side of tractor.

Who is skilled in doing IDs in these cases?

Thank you.

Bill

 

[staninlowerAL]

Welcome to the forum. There's a couple of ways to approximately ID a Cub manufacture date. One is by examining the major castings and compare the casting dates with the information tables. Most dates will be close to the same, some will/may be identical. The first and second number represents the month and date and the letter represents the year, Q represents 1947, R is 1048, S is 1949. etc. Some years have more than one letter and in 1955 the list starts over with letter A. The first Cub serial number in 1947 was 501 and ran pretty much consecutively until the end of production in 1979. The R2 number that you found is the part number of that particular engine block with the R2 making it the second revision from the original block which was R1. Very early cubs has the same serial number as the early engine serial number but since the engine was used for more applications than just tractors, there were more engines produced than tractors thus the gap between engine SN and tractor SN widened over time. There's a spreadsheet of information on the Cub forum that details a great deal of information that might be interesting to you. I'll try to post a link for it. Stan
Here's the link: https://farmallcub.com/community/threads/cub-database-update-2019.114949/ Within this link there's a link to a database by Raymond Durban dated 2015 which has a great deal of additional information. Stan

 

[Barnyard]

The numbers are 11 1B R stamped on a metal tag and affixed with screws,

More than likely the B in that cast number is an 8. These numbers are generally cast directly into the block and not on a tag. The screw heads you see are probably just part of the casting as well. Your casting code indicates the block was made on November 18, 1948. 251341R2 is the part number for the bare block.

 

[Glen]

Hi,
There is an engine serial number, it is stamped on the left side of the engine.
Below is a page from the 1950 Cub owner's manual, showing where the engine serial number is, you may need to clean it, and use a light to see it.
The engine serial number wasn't the same as the tractor serial number, except in 1947, for the first few months of Cubs.
The engine serial number is usually somewhat close to the tractor serial number. The Database Stan posted above shows some numbers.

https://farmallcub.club/rudi/farmallcub.com/rudi_cub/www.cleancomputes.com/Cub/Cub%20Owner's%20Manuals/McCormick%20Farmall%20Cub%20Owner's%20Manual%201950/Page%2002.jpg

There are casting date codes on the larger castings on Cubs. They tell the date when the parts were made. They use a letter for the year.
Below is info from TM Tractor Parts showing what the codes are.

TM Tractor Parts Quality New and Replacement Parts for McCormick Farmall Cub, International Cub, and International Lo-Boy

www.tmtractor.com

The info below shows where the codes are.
The code on the clutch housing is usually partly behind the clutch pedal.
The code on the last part on the page, the steering gear housing, usually can't be seen with the tractor assembled.
http://www.tmtractor.com/id/castdate_loc.htm

I sent you a message, you get to it at the upper right of the page.