The governor is still on my truck, but was supposedly adjusted to not have an effect sometime in the 50's by my grandfather. The truck has been in the family since new. It still has the throttle plate, but as best I can tell its not doing much. I have a vacuum gage plumbed in to the manifold and is between the engine and the governor / carburetor. The gage would indicate if either the carb throttle plate or the governor throttle plate was / is closing. I have not noticed the vacuum reading changing out of sync with my foot throttle input. If the governor was limiting the engine speed by throttling, there would be an increase in vacuum while this occurs and would appear on the gage as if you were lightly lifting your foot, but without your movement of course. If I floor it while at 55 mph or any speed, the vacuum will drop to something less than 2" hg, the lowest reading on the gage, and stay there until I lift my foot. To give an indication of how hard the engine is working to maintain 55 mph, I'm someplace around 6" hg just to maintain speed. Dropping down to 45 brings it up to around 13" hg. For reference, my engine idles at 19" hg.
My splash oiled 235 has been gone through and is in about the best mechanical shape one can be in at the moment. It has plenty of pep, and while rolling in 2nd direct, a blip of the throttle can break the duals loose if nothing is on the bed. The engine makes decent torque, but loses it quickly high in its rpm range. It will maintain 45 mph on the few small "hills" that are nearby with anything under 4500 lbs in the bed, it will not maintain 55 on these hills with or even without a load. No load on the same hill as above starts out at 55, but is down to a hair under 50 by the top, and would probably lose more if the hill was taller. I have had occasion to drive my truck around the texas hill country, up near Crenwelge's neck of the woods, and those hills are actually hills and even empty I struggled to break 45 on the steeper ones.
Accelerating the load is another story, it takes miles to get wound up when heavy, although once you get it there it holds fairly well on moderately flat ground.
