High Performance Manual Transmissions/Transmission Modifications. ELITE Tremec Distributor.
Joseph C. Liberty was born and raised in Detroit, so it is not surprising that he was employed with Cadillac Motor Car Division. Joe chose to pursue the tool and die trade, eventually becoming a full journey-man with a very broad technical and engineering back-ground. What spare time he had was devoted to working on hot cars, starting with a ’55 Ford he ran in B or C stock. After several other cars, Joe finally settled on a C/altered ’34 Ford Coupe. When he first got the Coupe, Joe began experimenting with transmissions, trying every type available; standards, automatics, 3-speeds and 4-speeds. Like every-one else, Liberty slick-shifted his own gears, only to end up with shelves of gear sets without synchro rings. Using his tool and die knowledge of metal compositions, machining, tooling and parts assembly, Joe began development work on a new, super strong slick-shift type ring. Countless numbers of designs and metals were tried before Liberty felt he had a ring that would work. Once his design was complete, this new ring became known as “Liberty’s Pro Ring” and was integrated into the company logo that is still used today. Word got around that Joe was on to something and he soon found himself processing the gear sets of friends with his new ring. The number of people wanting the Liberty ring soon surpassed Joe’s work bench operation and a machine shop was set up to handle the increasing demand. Liberty left Cadillac, after eighteen years, to form Liberty’s High Performance Products, Inc. The reputation of Liberty rings became national, with many top name super stock, pro stock and eliminator drivers switching to Liberty processed transmissions. The popularity of Liberty Products was reflected in sales, which quadrupled in a little over a year from the launch of the company. The crowning touch was the granting of U.S. Patent No. 3739892 on the Liberty Pro Ring and process. Growth again required a move to new quarters. Machining, processing and warehousing remained, with management and sales moved to new facilities. Joe personally ran all operations, frequently working into the night to make sure a racer received a gear set or just to chat with a customer about transmissions. Joe had a firm belief in providing his customers with the highest quality components. His use of materials and machining methods ensured that Liberty customers were running the best transmissions. Craig Liberty, Joe’s son, starting working for the company in the early eighties. As time progressed, Craig became more involved with all operations of the company. In 1999, Joe officially retired. At that time, Craig took over as President of Liberty’s High Performance Products, Inc. In addition to his responsibilities as President, Craig is the lead engineer at Liberty’s. He personally oversees every project in the facility. Liberty’s has continued to grow year after year and the customer base has expanded globally. In 2015, in an effort to keep up with demand, Liberty’s relocated to a larger facility. 2016 welcomed another member of the Liberty family. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Craig’s daughter, Nicole Liberty joined the team as a Design Engineer. Through all of the growth of the company, Liberty’s has maintained its reputation as a manufacturer of superior products. Research and development are a cornerstone in the success of this company. Testing of materials, processes and heat treat methods are done constantly to aid Liberty’s in manufacturing products that not only meet the needs of customers, but exceed the expectations of components in the most extreme applications. This high level of quality that began in the 1960’s has never been compromised and will continue to be the standard for years to come at Liberty’s High Performance Products, Inc.
Motorhead Garage, the program that each week introduces you to and shows you how to install the latest and exciting and innovative products for your vehicle. Motorhead Garage is presented by NHOU Protective Codings. Now here's your host, Dave Dobson. Welcome to Motorhead Garage presented by NHOU Protective Codings. Now I know we've got a lot of gear heads out there in the audience, so guess what? We've got the ultimate gear heads here. Nicole, you're with Liberty's Gears. Tell me how your grandfather started the business way back when, in the 60s. So my grandfather, Joe Liberty, he was a tool and die maker for Cadillac Motor Company. He was having trouble shifting his Ford top loader, so he decided to cut off a few synchros, So we decided to make a pro ring, which actually is now our logo, and then it's kind of progressed from there to our face plating, to our clutchless transmission. You drive this Outlaw 632 car, incredible speeds at the 8th mile. What's it Oh, it's amazing. Going out there, the trans is the absolute least of my worries. I mean, I just put the manual shifter in the car for this last race for us, and the fact that I can go out there and make those little mistakes as you're going through the learning curve of it, and know that the trans is still going to hold up to pretty much anything I can do to it is awesome. I have the confidence to go out there and take a new setup to a race. And how about the adjustability? Maybe you get to the race, weather changes, track conditions are different than you wanted. So now you get to change gears, and the adjustability of Liberty's gears, of one of your transmissions, is out of this world. Yes, we have an enormous amount of ratio options. You may not even be able to tell between the two ratio options that fall on the chart because they're so close together. So it's great. We can make little pin here changes and tune to the absolute best of our capabilities. We can look inside the gearbox here, Craig, and see why it'so adjustable. Show me how. This is what we have is an NHRA Pro Stock style transmission. It happens to be the transmission that we run also in our Outlaw 632 car. The gears in this transmission, because of how strong the trans is with the dual counter shaft, we're able to come up with so many different tooth profiles that the ratio chart is almost overwhelming. In fact, it probably is overwhelming for most of my customers. If you look at it, there's literally tens of thousands of racial combinations that you can come up with for an NHRA Pro Stock car. That's great for me because they want all of them. So we get to sell a lot of gears. For most people, they just tell me what they want. We pick a gear somewhere on the ratio chart that's going to work well for them and send them a transmission. A lot of my customers don't really utilize it, but the people that do just absolutely couldn't live without the adjustability that we can give them. Let's talk about the transmission next to you there. Next transmission here, the red one. This is our extreme style transmission. This is more for our mountain motor Pro Stock, bigger torque stuff, power adder cars, still a clutch because of the input shaft. That's what the input shafts here are designed for, a clutch. The tooth profile is very limited. The ratio chart for this is a lot more manageable. You look at it, you don't get an instant headache by looking at it because it's not so overwhelming. But there are a few people that want, I guess, more adjustability out of this. So they start looking at this transmission because it'll give it to you. It's a balancing act. This transmission is designed around absolute light weight, as light as we can build a transmission. We get a complete dual-counter shaft transmission for under 100 pounds, 96 pounds complete with shift or everything for what that trans handles. That is actually amazing. This transmission, though, is because of the tooth profiles we limit it to. This transmission will handle up to 4,000 horsepower. So if you think about that out of a manual transmission, clutchless manual transmission, it's actually amazing what it'll handle, the abuse. Pretty incredible. And then if you run in a torque converter? If you run a torque converter, this has a female input shaft. So it's more purpose built for a torque converter, slightly longer case. You put a center bearing support on the clusters. Partially, the reason for that center bearing support, when you start getting 3,000 plus horsepower in this trans, we do see these clusters start to bow out and flex a little. Not extremely concerned about it, but since this trans was designed more for 4,000 and plus horsepower, we decided we would put center bearing supports. It's in the female input. This is our T-style transmission. The T stands for Torque Converter. In the nutshell, why does Liberty's gears stand above the others that are out there? This strength is one of the biggest things. This transmission, if you use it for what it's designed for, if you want to use, say, a pro stock transmission in a pro mod car, well then you might be asking for trouble, but if you're going to use my pro mod transmission in a pro mod car, you very, very seldom have any issues with it. Well I couldn't have said it better myself. Go to Liberty's Gears. com if you're into winning and that sort of thing. We're going to gear up for another segment when we come back to Motorhead Garage presented by NHLU Protective Coding. Keep it right here.
