Identify year of engine

[coving]

I have a 1960 Bainchina that I have installed a 126 650cc engine  Trouble is I don't know the year of the engine.  Does anyone know how to determine the year by the engine number?  Tried to include a pic of the car.  The 126 650cc engine barely fits under the hood.  Very nice in this application
coving

[GTMaster]

Hi,

My book says the following:

126 600cc (594cc) engine, code is A.000 (made in Poland and Italy)
126 650cc (652cc) engine, code is A.1 (made in Poland and Italy)
126 650cc (652cc) engine, code is A1.076E (this is the 650E type)
(made in Poland)

To the best of my knowledge, the 600cc ones were built from '72 till '77, the original 650cc was from '77 till '83 ('83 was when the production of the Italian 126 stopped) then came the 650E from then on (these are basically the Polish ones, though i don't know whether the Polish engines used different engine codes compared to the Italian ones). The later Polish ones had things like cat. converters fitted (the ones that were built well into the 90's but i don't know whether the later engines were given different engine codes). This is the most i know of the 126 engines regarding  their engine codes.

[coving]

Thank you

My engine number is 126 A1.000 7801838.   Your info indicates that it is at least a 77 year engine.  When ordering parts are all the parts from 77 to 83 the same?  Another question is if any two of the numbers identify the actual year??

At least I have a better idea of what to purchase for parts.  Your info has been helpful

coving

[GTMaster]

My engine number is 126 A1.000 7801838.   Your info indicates that it is at least a 77 year engine.  When ordering parts are all the parts from 77 to 83 the same? 

Yes i think those engines would be the same. The difference between the 650 and 650E is mainly with the carburettor and ignition system (the E engines have a DIS like ignition system but it still has mechanical points but doesn't have a dist. cap and has a different transformer, while the carbs have smaller jets).
I don't know what all the other numbers mean but  using the engine number prefixes you can approximately calculate how old and type your engine is.

[DEYAN IYI]

Hi!

The 650E has also different camshaft, exhaust and a bit higher compression ratio.

The fabrication of 126 in Italy ended in 1979.

There is almost not a difference between the engines during the years (unfortunately), so have no worry.

If you have the engine out of the car, you can easily (if it's readable) check out behind the flywheel on the block, also on the  head (if it is the original one, so you can trust) the casting sign of year. It looks like a little sun with number in the middle: 87 for 1987, 76 for 1976... This way you will know approximately the year of production.

Have fun!