1969 Smokey Yunick Camaro

Hi... just because someone (or a website or two) claims they are "hemi heads", I wouldn't be too quick to believe it. I suspect if you saw the combustion chambers on those so-called "hemi" heads you'd change your mind pretty quickly...L-O-L.

Keep in mind that: A hemi generally needs a central plug location. A hemi needs a large bulky rocker arm assembly. The valve cover would have to be very (very) wide to allow for the valve arrangement on a hemi small block head. On the other hand, Chevy pretty much had a background in Canted Valve or "Semi Hemi" heads in the rat motor family at the time. The canted valve design does not mandate a central plug location nor does it mandate a convoluted rocker arm arrangement that would require a comprehensive cylinder block revision. And a canted valve setup could use a valve cover that was, for all intents and purposes shaped like a little rat motor piece. Following right along, a canted valve 90-degree V6 and then a canted valve small block head was released by GMPP years later that with revised ports looked suspiciously close to the head on the Yunick engine. I suspect if you do some additional research you'll find that this was a canted valve small block cylinder head that Yunick, Jenkins and others were playing with at the time. In fact, I think you'll discover that Jenkins even messed with them in his Vega/Monza era.

And I too discussed these heads with Smokey at length (anyone who knew him in later years will tell you he was pretty free with information).


Wayne