MTFCA Forum

After taking a through inventory of the 25 Touring purchased last summer, I discovered a lot of pieces missing. Looked for individual pieces/parts and ran across a COMPLETE 24 rolling chassis W/ Ruckstell! Picked up the whole chassis for the price of the Ruckstell alone.
Also found this BW R10 Overdrive that, until recently, had been used behind an early 20s Chevy. Originally from a late 40s/early 50s Jeep.
Tom
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Tom,
Nice snags! Those wheels look really nice. That overdrive is cool.

Those overdrives are nice. I've never seen one that wasn't attached to the back of a manual transmission. They cannot run in reverse, and the installations I've seen had a rod at the back of the transmission that allowed the reverse sliding gear to lock the overdrive out when the car was put in reverse. The solenoid, when activated, allowed the overdrive to engage whenever torque was relieved. Below about 20 MPH, a governor switch would de-energize the solenoid and allow the car to freewheel and run in direct drive. The small lever was connected to a cable to allow the driver to manually lock out the overdrive. A kickdown switch under the gas pedal allowed the driver to floor the pedal and kick the vehicle out of overdrive and into direct. The switch de-energized the solenoid and momentarily grounded theignition points to kill torque and allow the shift. Momentarily releasing the gas pedal allowed the unit to shift back into overdrive. They worked great. 3 speeds, plus overdrive, plus a passing gear. I've rigged them up to allow the driver to shift between direct and overdrive at will when moving forward only. That gave 6 speeds forward with a 3 speed manual, but if you backed up in overdrive, it broke the planetary overdrive gearset. They wouldn't tolerate being run without adequate lubricant, either. Running low on lube would cause the overdrive gearset to sieze, leaving you with direct drive only.

I thought it was a real score for the OD. My 58 Custom 300 has the T86/R10 combo with the OD set up as a manual 4th gear … cable to lockout and toggle to solenoid.

With the T the plan is to have a n/c switch on the R pedal so that, should the OD solenoid be energized, the switch will break when R is engaged.

My initial thinking is to install the OD back by the differential as I have 2 rearends and torque tubes.

Tom
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Tom: The OD switch does not lock out the overdrive. Lock out is a mechanical lever. The switch only allows you to engage or disengage the overdrive. When disengaged without manually operating the Lock out lever, the car will be in free wheel mode, no brakes, and you can't back up. Auxiliary brakes are a must with this type of OD because of the freewheeling when not locked out and disengaged. I have run these in the past, they work well. I put the lockout on a pull cable mounted under the dash and the switch on the ruckstell shifter. At the time I lived in Bakersfield and mostly flat land tours. But now up here in Sacramento area we tour a lot in the gold country and the OD is not that useful, so I removed then and sold them back to the original builder. I found they worked best with a 10:1 pinion.

John, point taken.

The brake mounted solenoid disconnect was only in the event I forgot to disconnect at the main. I like the idea of mounting on the Ruckstell.

Tom
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