Reply To: Overdrive Help/Series 80

Home Page Forums Chassis Overdrive Help/Series 80 Reply To: Overdrive Help/Series 80

#393389

With regard to overdrives, I agree with all that’s been said. I have an overdrive on a 1926 Packard Eight Phaeton and the difference is startling. Yet I still have stock gears for my hilly country of western New England.

However, I’d like to also throw out that there is another option besides Lloyd Young. I’ve never heard anything bad about Lloyd’s overdrives, so this is simply another option.

I have a Mitchell overdrive on the Packard. These are brand new units made by the Mitchell Manufacturing Co in Colusa, California. They are a gear box with fully synchronized gears actuated by a push-pull lever (or electric solenoid). It can be left engaged all the time and be used from a stop. In effect, it is a gear splitter, splitting every gear including reverse. I believe this is different from the Borg OD, especially the part about starting from rest in OD.

The Mitchell mounts amidships to the frame, requiring two smaller driveshafts to be made — transmission to OD, OD to differential. The Lloyd Young OD, I understand, is mounted directly to the differential. My only concern with this is the unsprung weight it adds to the rear axle and stress on the pinion, but I’ve no engineering data to substantiate that concern.

Again, this is just another option. Were I to put one on a Pierce, I might give Lloyd a try so I can compare the two. But I’d want to carefully look over one that’s on a car and test drive a car that has one.

Good luck. — Scott