Lazy B Governor

Hey All!

Gonna share today's experiences, see if anyone else has had this character appear:

My '38B hand starts wonderfully, purrs like a big kitten.  She doesn't get worked much, but today, I drove her down the hill to a buddy's house with the PTO log-splitter in town.  Farthest she's been run in oh... decades...  but she hasn't been in any way unemployed, I do run her every month or so.

As I'm motoring down the gravel road, I go down the hill, over the creek, back up the hill... it's about a 70ft elevation change over 300ft of travel, so it's a good climb... she slowed down a bit as I made the climb, and since this log splitter is ghastly heavy, it didn't surprise me that she lost speed... picked it right back up as it leveled out on the flat.

I had a few more rolling hills, but the steepest grade was actually my buddy's lane, so the last 200 yards, and right after an abrupt right turn off the old highway.

I wholly expected it to bog down, seein's how I was still in high gear, and she slowed down... and down... and down...

And just about the time I was gonna dump the clutch and shift down, something lit a fire under her differential and she woke up with a whole lotta power, accellerated up that hill like it was in a fight for bragging rights with a Minnie-Moe... right back up to goverend speed.

And when I got to the top, she didn't run away, just held the governed speed as before.

So... clearly the governor was not responding to 'droop' as it should have been.  My gut says it's either got a little corrosion or bind in an outer part of the mechanism, or something INSIDE the governor was hung up a little bit.

I haven't dug into it at all, didn't have the tools on hand, or the time to do so, but when I return, I WILL... but I'd like to be armed with others' experiences here.

Anyone else had anything like that happen, and if you did, did you do any investigation, and if so... what did you find?

Yeah, normally I would have investigated it FIRST, but I got there as the sun was getting really low, by time I got everything else attended to, it was too dark for a closer look. 

This B has been in my fleet for well over a decade, and never really needed any attention, but with it's years, I entirely assumed that it's initial character was simply a matter of being a bit tired, and pulling a heavy load, because the governor DID readily respond to flat land and climbing the road hills, just acted like it was approaching it's power limit.  

When it got to the last, and steepest (driveway), it was clear that there was SIGNIFICANTLY more power left... and I'm happy about that... I'd rather chase a lazy governor issue, than a tired engine.

I've never had to pull a B gov apart- Is there similarity between governor wear/failures of the WD/45/D17 series, and the B's governor?