A look online at your favorite place to buy, sell, and trade racing goodies will bring up tons of daily wheeling and dealing from racing engine components or complete engines.

Dart Machinery offers a wealth of product knowledge on its website and YouTube channel, titled Dart University. Here, Kevin Byrd authors various videos that help racers’ knowledge.

With their growing product lines, Dart Machinery, a Race Winning Brands Company, explains how you can identify their various components via their carefully orchestrated part number stampings. For instance, let’s say you purchased a short block or engine manufactured by Dart and want a little more history.

To identify a Dart block, the first thing you want to do is look up the stamping. That is typically located on the front face of the block. This stamped identifier will generally begin with a letter with numbers following.

The first letter on the block’s stamping will identify its general layout dimensions and parameters as the block was originally machined, such as big-block Chevy, small-block Ford, etc. It will also identify the material (iron or aluminum, for example) and the dimensions of the entirety of the block.

The remaining number set on the stamping will provide much more detail. These identifying numbers, without the beginning or ending letters, are also stamped on the block’s main caps. This cap stamping is another source to identify the block, as well as ensure that each main cap is generally matched to your specific block. At this point, you can call the Dart Machinery tech line with your numbers in hand for more assistance in learning your block’s details.

Don’t confuse the stamped numbers from the end-to-end of a cylinder head, and do not try researching any of the numbers cast into the material. Those indicators are casting identifiers that typically won’t tell you anything. – Kevin Byrd, Dart Machinery

With Dart Machinery cylinder heads, there is either an eight- or nine-digit serial number right on the very front face of each head. You can do your own research to learn the cylinder head details by visiting dartheads.com and navigating to the tech section. These Dart online head pages will decipher your serial number and tell you pretty much everything you need to know.

Each Dart block has a identification number on the front face. You can’t identify these with the Dart catalog, but a call to Dart’s tech department will help with a wealth of individual data.

There will usually be a date code on the opposite side of the cylinder head face. This code is comprised of most typically three digits followed by two paired digits and a spaced number. For example, your head manufactured date number is 249-space-14-space-1. This number tells you the head was manufactured on the 249th day of the year. In this case, the year was 2014, and then the single last number tells you the shift of the day it was manufactured.

Now you can gain a deeper knowledge of any Dart Machinery head or block to achieve the lowdown on its history.