A couple of days ago I reground a camshaft for a customer who has a 5.0 Ford engine out of a late '80's pickup. It is going into some sort of hot rod pickup application so I put on 218 at .050 with .287 lobe lift which fit very easily. What's cool is that this cam was originally ground on a 108 lobe separation which I kept the same AND it has a 104 degree intake centerline for 4 degrees of advance which should be perfect.

Looking in the Melling catalog the cam is listed as SYP-26 and was used from 1977 to 1991. The cam for the earlier engines is the SYP-25 which has similar specs ground onto a 109 lobe separation but this cam is ground with 5 degrees of retard built in. Everyone always talks about the retarded timing sets (8 degrees) that were used in the 460, 351C etc but on the Windsor engines that retard was ground into the camshafts. I'll have to look later at what was used in the 351 Windsor engine but I think that it was a cam with a little more duration on a similar lobe sep with slightly more advance.

If you're planning on using a stock replacement cam in one of these engines it might be worthwhile to look at the specs in the book closely because finding a cam that's much more optimum from the factory offerings might be pretty easy.


Reground later 302 flat tappet cam.

 

Cleveland series engines (335-series engines meaning 351C, 351M/400) had the camshafts themselves ground retarded. 429/460s had the retard on the crank sprocket of the timing set (chain and cam sprocket were same for 68-71 non-retarded, and 72-87 silent chains). EFI 7.5s (88-97)b got a non-retarded double roller set from the factory..

 

I'll have to look in the book on the cams for the 351C, 400 etc and see what it shows. I know that there were at least 2 different grinds. One on a wide lobe sep and one that's narrow but they could have nearly anything for an ICL. I'll have to see if the grind of the narrow one is similar to the Windsor cams. It seems pretty likely.

 

According to the data in the Melling catalog the cam used in the pickup truck 351M is the SYB-21. It has 192/198 degrees at .050 with .247 and .250 lobe lift. It is ground on a 110 lobe sep and in the engine 1 degree advanced on 109. In the cars this same cam is used in the 400 and i 351M. 75-79 351M all used the SYB-27 which curiously isn't listed on the spec page... I wonder if that cam is the one that's ground with retarded centerlines?

 

Great info Dave!

 

Where all of this got started was a friend of mine bought a lot of parts and ended up with a bunch of new camshafts for all sorts of engines. We were looking up a lot of them to see what the specs were and to figure out what might work well for a performance regrind. For instance he had several stock cams for Pontiac 301 v8's and those worked perfectly for a regrind using a lobe with 218 degrees at .050 duration and .287 lift. It fits right on the cam, clears the barrel and ends up full size. These stock 302 cams which he doesn't happen to have any of work really well for a similar grind.