Have some Astabula's with two digit date stamp on them but do the Takagi cranks have something similar?

Takagis also have a date stamp

My Takagi cranks have a casting number on them rather than an actual stamp. Inbetween the BB threads it has T781

I bought them new bitd , so the 7th month 1981 works nicely , not too sure what the T prefix is for , Takagi were fairly busy making 1 piece cranks back then...

Chrome 24 x 175mm model , lightly worn , but still straight as a die.

JB

Jet Black I dont mean to sound sarcastic but maybe the "T" stands for Takagi ?

I don't know if Takagi cast their own products or had a 3rd party cast for them. So I can't really comment with any authority on what may appear to be the obvious.

The T could be cast into the metal along with the abbreviated date , for a number of reasons , that may or may not be related to the final external finish of the product. Hence me leaving it open for someone with more casting & metalurgical knowledge/experience than I.

In my personal experiences , casting marks on mass produced items usually don't follow the rule of Occam's Razor (sp?)

If pushed for an answer or an educated guess , I'd say the T was there to indicate the particular batch of metal that was poured into the cast for quality control or something along those lines.

I'd like to know for certain what the T is all about , but being able to , ID & understand the cast marks on a set of Japanese cranks from the 1980's isn't something I'll lose too much sleep over , casting marks on certain V8 engine blocks are a completely different story tho , lottsa money involved if you know how to read them properly


JB

Got a set of Takagi 170 x 24s here (off an '81 Goose). These are the ones marked "Cr-Mo", rather than "MX", and are stamped on one side of the bottom bracket with "Takagi", the other with "Japan" and simply the number "21". Looks to me like a batch number rather than any date code.

I also have a very sweet NOS 180mm Tioga Max-Flo tubular one piece crank, which is thoughtfully marked "1.84"...