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those hemis were a nightmare to tune due to the massive combustion chambers which slowed flame speed dramatically , the higher these engines were spun the more timing was necessary to make power , there was no 'cut off point' the engine just decided it had enough & hammered the pistons/rings out ,



I heard Gartlis tell the story of how he did not want to run the 426 the first year. the 392 had broke 200 MPH and that was his sales pitch for appearances. well after quite a few tries the 426 only went 198. In his attempt to intentionally destroy it and go back to the 392 he bumped the timing to a then unheard of 40 degrees . BAM 207 upped it to 45 hit 213mph



I think the Ramchargers figured this out before Garlits did much the same way Garlits did. There top fuel car just wasn't running as it should and I think Maxwell came up with idea of bumping the timing. I think I read they got up as high as 60 degrees and it really turned on at that point(and they at that point started to bust up things as they hadn't discovered aluminum rods yet). They weren't sharing that little piece of info with anyone else at the time.