Mr.F That photo of yours is of a one-of-a-kind prototype 427 Cammer which had low-positioned spark plugs. It made less horsepower than Ford had targeted for the project, so the head was quickly redesigned with the spark plugs in the familiar top-spot. The redesign worked great.

Yep - I thought it was a more interesting photo than the usual "dyno" shot.

And as with most of my photos, its captioned as a "display prototype" or something similar. This is done in Tool Tip format, to save space on the page. Hold your cursor over the image to see its caption.

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The only Cammer chart I saw does show the HP curve passing through 616 HP @ 7000 RPM on it's way up to the 8300 peak, so I've always suspected that Ford marketing folk decided to release the "7000 RPM" value (the official redline of the race 427 back then) so that Bill France might not notice how formidable a weapon it was that they had before he legalized it for NASCAR.

That's very likely, although the internal documents I've seen never mention anything of the kind....and its unlikely that any would.

Note also that the 12.0:1 compression ratio was for the first 50 Cammers contracted back in late 1964 on a shoestring budget for the specific purpose of out-revving the 426 Chrysler Hemi on NASCAR superspeedways. Ford pretty much figured they couldn't out horsepower the Hemi at a given RPM (they're both hemis), but the SOHC design would allow the motor to rev farther than the pushrod Hemi could, thus making more horsepower in the upper registers.

As with many abortive projects, Ford promised lots of things. The question, for me, is when do the "facts" become so blurred as to be unusable?

For the OET's "spec sheets", I had a tough choice - and decided to use the best, published (by Ford) specs available. These are then annotated as necessary to explain...well, whatever the heck I think needs to be explained. I'm still adding footnotes, as time allows. See, some of us don't have the luxury of posting "I'm still trying to verify some of this" on every page. ;-)

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Having lost the first battle, Ford kept the pressure on the 426 Hemi by ordering up 500 "street cammers" in 1965. These street cammers would have 10.5:1 CR, though a few would get an even higher compression of 12.5:1. These Cammers would have to be cheaper than the first batch, so they got iron heads, adjustable rockers, and supposedly a slightly taller aluminum valve cover to clear the adjustable rockers. Ford ordered this new Cammer in two batches of 250 engines. There is some question as to whether Ford ever built the second half of the order.

In fact, Ford documents show that many of the planned engines were never built. I don't have the figures handy, but I seem to recall the unbuilt total as being over 250.

Turns out the parts had been ordered and delivered made, but not assembled - "scrapped a priori", if you will. Apparently, that's why they were only offered through Holman-Moody, after a certain point. The papers I have show both cancellation of the program and (later) transference of all SOHC components to H-M. I presume they sold those parts as-is and also put 'em together, as needed.

Mr F