Am curious if anyone here can provide information on Tom Beatty? I have a vintage blown engine with a Tom Beatty idler assy as part of my blower drive and would like to learn more about him and or his products from the day. A simple search showed he was involved with a Bonneville car etc but have not found anything concerning this drive /idler I have. His name is cast into it with raised letters. thanks for any info.
I have a T-10 Four Speed transmission with a Tom Beatty overdrive conversion. You can use OD in any forward gear . It makes a 4 speed into a 8 speed. It makes for a extremely long trans. Ford OD on a GM Trans. It is the only one I have ever seen. It is in my 34 Ford Pickup & I use a switch on the knob to change the OD gears. It lets you use a low gear rear end (4-11) & have road gear in OD. It has a cable lock out to lock it out of OD. It is kind of different . You have to lock out of OD in order to back up or park because it will roll off on a incline. I would like to know of other Tom Beatty Trans conversions . Thanks Jerry
I had one of those trans, it was too long for my roadster and sold it to a guy in TX. I think he wanted to put in a Mustang.
While I never saw a Gilmer drive that Tom Beatty built that doesn’t mean he never made one. Or possibly his bracket and hardware was used on that Pontiac block but someone made a flat, flanged pulley for it. There are numerous photos of that idler pulley bracket that he made, just do a search here using his name and lots of stuff will pop up.
There were many Saginaw 4-speeds made in to “8” speeds and it wasn’t hard to do. Having the reverse gear inside the main case really helped. Old timers who ran with the SCTA would know more about Tom’s exploits but many are now gone.
Dave sold the Beatty tank many years ago. Toms blower drives were multi V belts during his Bonneville days.
the pictures of his tank in the dark were in his garage in 1973, the rest are shots for the internet.
I am not sure I can be of any help but I have seen many of the parts he made. I talked to him many times at Bonneville over the years. He explained in detail to me about his floatless Stromberg carbs he used on the Olds and I made a couple sets and dyno tested them on a flathead with nitro. He used V belts on his blower drives because they would drive the blower normally but if there was an internal explosion or backfire the belts would slip and not blow the case apart as with a cog belt. At Bonneville in the early 50's we always had the motel room next door to them and parked next to each other in the lot. I have some old 8mm film somewhere showing him torquing the heads on his flathead in the parking lot. There were 2 stories about Tom posted on here by me back in 2011.
Many years ago I had a Tom Beatty blower snout. It had fins on it running front to back. I have never seen another, and I wish that I still had it.
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