[scottj]

compiled by
HARVEY J. CRANE, JR.
October 1, 1999

Ed Winfield made his first performance camshafts in 1914. These were motorcycle cams with individual lobes pinned to a shaft.

His first automotive camshafts were ground in 1919 when he built his first homemade cam grinder. Ed was 17 years old at that time.

Ed told me his mother gave him the money to purchase a used grinding machine that he converted to a cam grinder by adding a rocker table. This homemade cam grinder was used in his mother's garage to regrind Ford Model T camshafts into racing specifications.

Ed told me he first made only two masters, a SEMI RACE GRIND and a FULL RACE GRIND! He later made a third master that was more duration and lift than the SEMI but less than the FULL. He then used the FULL RACE master as an intake and the new master as an exhaust.
He called this new reground camshaft a THREE QUARTER RACE CAM! Ed said "It was three quarters of the way to a full race cam".

According to Dema Elgin, ED began working for Harry Miller at the age of 14 1/2 in the carburation department. Within a few months he was doing other machine work on the famous Miller racing engines. Harry wanted Ed to stay on with him and offered Ed more money. Ed was being paid .60 cents per hour and was offered .70 cents, but ED wasn't fond of Harry because he was like a dictator.

Ed quit grinding camshafts in October of 1969 after he finished a batch of Drake Offenhauser camshafts. That's 55 years of grinding cams!