Ford casting number D2AE-CA

This casting number is for a 351 Cleveland big block engine from 1972....

With Ford, they began using this form of block casting in the late 1950's. They assigned each decade a letter which begins the casting number. 1950 began the coding with letter 'B'. Each subsequent decade received the following letter. The first number after the first letter is the year of that decade in which the part was modeled for.

This means that your block casting number D2AE-CA is for a:

D = 1970's

2 = 1972

This piece has a casting number for 1972.

The remainder of the casting number tells you about the part number and engineering number...thus it's a 351 Ford Cleveland big block engine designed for a 1972 model.