Overdrive Governor adjustment

DocHornet

Wonder if anyone has ever attempted adjusting the overdrive governor for different speed? The manual makes no mention of any adjustment, so I assume it is not possible, but I'd sure like to get my O/D unit to "hold off" until a bit higher speed. Thought perhaps one of you engineering gurus has tackled that issue?

lostmind

Maybe shorten springs?

nick s

find a gear with more teeth.

super651

Doc, make sure that it is not full of trans. oil. remove the top cover and if it is full of oil thatwill let the gov. shift to soon. (gov,shaft seal needs replaced) Mine was full of oil that leaked past the seal and it would shift to soon)
The later Gov.from a 56-57 Gm. or Studebaker that has the Aluminum housing has an adjustment screw on the top plastic cover so just remove the coating and the screw in under it.
Hope this helps.

Park_W

For some reason, these governors do tend to "cut in" at a lower speed than they did when new. Maybe aging of the main spring. And of course our changing out of rear end gears for better cruising ratios just aggravates that problem. I've had some luck with adjusting the cut-in speed, by carefully bending the dark-colored, t-shaped strip that has on of the contact points on it. The process is hard to describe. Just remove the cover, which has the contact points attached to it's underside, and study it a bit. It operates on a slight "over center" basis, so it's a bit tricky to figure out where to bend the long metal strip to get the desired change in behavior. But be careful . . . it's spring steel, rather brittle, so it's easy to bend it far enough to break it.

I've never torn one of these critters totally apart, so don't know if there's another way to change the calibration, by working with the main spring and "leaves" part of the unit.

DocHornet

Thanks for all the comments. I'll try all this
Phil