The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop OverDrive Inc. (Brownell's Book)

One of the first books I got to help learn about working on my truck was Tom Brownell's "How To". I was just looking through it again and came across OverDrive Inc. This company installed the overdrive unit in front of the differntial, instead of the tranny, and used the torque tube. Is anyone running one of these? I have never heard it mentioned here. Are they still in business?

I've never used one but I think they're still in business. Here's their link: www.gearvendors.com

I think the reason you don't hear much about them is they are a little pricey.

I don't think they are still in business. I have never heard of anybody running their torque tube OD conversions either. I tried unsuccessfully to contact them a few years back about buying one of their manual solenoid conversion kits. I think the address is listed in the book.
Maybe someone else knows more....

Gear Vendors is a different compnay. I know of the one you're looking for, read about it in an older printing of the same book. They don't seem to have a website, nor have I been able to find anything about their current status. I thought that their phone # was listed in the book, maybe not in the current edition? I don't have the book handy right now, I'll check for the # and post it if i find it. I seem to recall that most of the conversions they did were for Model As, but they do later torque tubes as well.

I think they just faded away. There is a lot of machining involved in the conversion and they were costly. I have seen them on model A's and a friend had a 46 Ford ragtop with one of these conversions. They probably used a BW OD which started out as an open driveline unit. It would cost more to do this type of conversion than to convert to an open driveline and use a later OD trans or an automatic/OD. Tom's book was printed in 1991 but I had seen a similar article many years earlier. Gearvendors makes a good unit which is used on a variety of manual & auto transmissions but I'm not aware that they do torque tube conversions.
Fred

Gear Vendors adds say they have torque tube set-ups, but I haven't seen what models and years and whether they attach to the rear of the transmission or elsewhere in the driveline. If you contact them and find out that info, it would be good to post here.

I just bought a rebuilt GV unit for my F150's C6. A brochure that came with it did state they make adapters for Torque tube set ups. The example in there was a Rolls Royce Sliver Ghost. But it says to contact them for other applications.

Here is an example pic of the torque tube GV set up:
http://www.gearvendors.com/images/gears20.jpg

This shows the "remote" mount system. A drive shaft goes to the unit from the tranny:
http://www.gearvendors.com/images/gears21.jpg

Did Gear Vendors buy out the old "Honeamatic" driveline OD unit? The picture sure looks like the Hone unit. I think Hone has been defunct for several years.

Oops, just saw on another post it was called a "Hone-O-Drive".

The GV unit is truly a work of art but I think they are about 2K+, the machine work to make it fit into a torque tube is probably another 2K and now you have it installed in a 60 year old system. It seems cost probitive to me when there are so many other options available.
Fred

I was going to point out that US Gear has a similar unit, but the price is still over $2K......