If you have an R-10 or R-11 overdrive transmission chances are you have never seen one of these. That is not surprising, as most of these are long gone. This is the boot that originally covered the top of the governor. It kept moisture, dirt, and road grime, out of the inside of the governor.
As a rule... governors are typically trouble-free and require the least amount of maintenance, of any part of the overdrive, which makes sense because the only job the governor does is activate the overdrive via the relay when the vehicle speed reaches between 28 and 33 mph.
The two things that typically go wrong with the governor are the points inside of the governor housing (which look and work much like ignition points) become coated with oil dirt or road grime and quit making the electrical connection or...the cotton wrapped wire that comes up out of the governor metal cover will lose some of its insulation as it becomes dried out and brittle, causing a "short" in the circuit. The solution for the broken or missing insulation is to replace the governor wire with modern vinyl wrapped wire or new cotton wrapped wire if you want the original look.
The best solution for keeping out the moisture, dirt, and road splash out of the governor in the first place is to have the protective boot installed. But that has been a problem up to now as the originals are long gone and no new replacements were available.
As a replacement, I have seen soup cans, pop cans, beer cans, trash bags, and shop rags, even part of a bicycle tire tube. Most of those ideas were better than nothing but did not do a really good job of keeping the uglies out.
We now have for sale brand new exact reproductions of the rubber boot that once covered your governor from the factory. Installing one will keep out the moisture, dirt and road grime that will eventually cause you governor to stop working. You can find these along with new solenoids, relays, kick down switches, control cables, solenoid oil seals, and the gear oil, and a shop manual in the "parts" section of the website under what else...."overdrive parts."
You should now sleep better knowing your governor is well protected from the elements.
