do canadian A's have different / unique serial number sequence?

[Guest ewing]

dad had an early 30 model A serial number CAE 9897. It has the 1929 instrument cluster, installed in early 30's. 9897 is the number on the engine.

I was looking through the MAFCA site and see the engine production numbers. this nunmber 9897, if produced in sequence would have been built in January 1928.

Question is, did the engine numbers match the production number?

Where would the designation CAE come from? What does that tell us?

[MCHinson]

The Judging Standards has a separate listing for Canadian Engine Numbers.

From Feb 28 to August of 29 they used CA letters on the engine numbers.

If it were CA9897 it would be a May of 1928.

Page F2 of The Judging Standards has the listing of Canadian Engine Numbers.

Unfortunately, while they do list 3 letter series from 9-4-29 to 2-29-32, it does not list a CAE series. The last series is CAD, which makes me suspect that your engine was a later engine produced for service replacement. This is only a guess on my part. Can you double check the letters?

[Guest ewing]

yes, the engine # is CAE 9897

The car apparently is an early 1930 model. I believe dad had come to that conclusion, and I am wondering what evidence he would see to conclude that other than the instrument cluster.

[dad passed away a couple of years ago and I am looking through old records of his Model A.]

Were there other indicators of early 1930 production?

[MCHinson]

I would seriously suggest that you should purchase a copy of the MARC/MAFCA Judging Standards. Assuming that the car has not been restored, and everything is basically as it was originally, you could probably analyze different items on the car and review a hundred or so different changes detailed in the Judging Standards and come up with a good idea of when the car was manufactured.

If it has been restored, it might not be so easy as anything that was used that was not an exact replacement, might give you contradictory clues regarding the manufacturing date.

Do you perhaps have a serial number different from the engine number on your title or other ownership documents? If the engine has been changed but you have the original serial number on the documents, we can pinpoint the date of manufacture from the serial number from the ownership documents.

[Guest ewing]

the oldest paperwork is a 1964 registration card with CAE 9897 as the car serial #

The car has been refinished completely/ restored, so likely little of the original production date cues may be remaining.

I did find now, in reading thru old file stuff, that he did write an article for the local club newsletter and find that he reports that the metal arms in the roof frame have the date March 15, 1930 stamped on it. Another interesting note is that the centre wood section of the main top bow had an old repair / replacement and in pencil was scribbled' Crescent Auto repair'. He reported that that was an auto repair shop that his Uncle had owned and operated for a number of years, locally here, but not sure when in time.

Interesting history.

[Guest Roverdriver]

The Canadian factory sent cars to British Commonwealth countries, so most T's and A's in Australia and New Zealand are basically Canadian cars with a little local content. I have definitely seen a couple of CAE prefix engine numbers in New Zealand, but that was many years ago, and they were just second hand engines so no other items to assist with dating.

[fundytides]

I haver a 1931 Canadian Std. Roadster. The original engine, which has since been replaced was Serial CAS1963 according to the old registration. Unfortunately, the old block is long gone so I can't verify the serial number. It seems that this would be a very low serial number for a 31 so maybe the S should be a 5 or?. Does anyone know the range of seial numbers for Canadian 31's?