MTFCA Forum

Never seen one of these before. Anyone have any ideas?

Could make a cool tachometer drive. Total guess though.

It’s RARE, UNIQUE, Like finding HENS TEETH!

What else.., a Funky Monkey!

Could be an air compressor drive.

Hank

I'm thinking maybe a mounting for an auxiliary magneto, but that's another pure guess.

I like the Tachometer drive idea. It's available if anyone has an interest in it.

I think it's possibly a drive for a governor. I think I may have one somewhere, I'll have to look.
Larry Azevedo

It looks like it has a straight cut gear in the unit. How would that match up to the angle cut gear of the generator? Unless I’m missing something...

There is a missing idler gear. It probably had a larger helical cut gear to engage the generator gear, and an undersized straight cut gear for whatever it is that it drove. Notice that the straight gear inside is only about a half inch wide.
To eliminate the magneto drive idea, check inside that inner gear to see f it has the common universal magneto drive taper and key-way? If it has those, it was probably a magneto drive intended to keep the generator in operation with the magneto sitting on top of it. (I doubt that is what it was, however that was my first thought.) If that gear does not fit the armature of a common magneto? It would most likely be for something else (although something could have been changed?)?
It could have been a governor, or a tach drive? But on these, I would doubt it. Both those items have easier and simpler ways to accomplish the task. This is a bit heavier duty than those would need. I would be more inclined to think an oil pump. Maybe even a combination unit with distributor or even a water pump?

Maybe a supercharger?

Wayne nailed it, I didn’t think of the idler gear having both a straight cut gear and helical cut gear.

I'm putting my money on the supercharger!

Well,....I'm guessing that because TT trucks were used for all kinds of things that involved pumping fluids, like water (fire fighting equipment) or fuel (as in tank truck) I'm thinking that the most common need for such a power take-off would be to drive a pump.