What Happened to Pete Jackson Gear Drives? A Buyer’s Search for a Legacy Timing Component

Our maintenance lead asked me to look into Pete Jackson gear drives last year. I typed "what happened to pete jackson gear drives" into a search engine and got a run of forum threads that all sort of ended without a conclusion. Some said the company disappeared. Some blamed a bad batch. One guy said it was "gears, not chains" and that was it.

I'm an office administrator for a 140-person manufacturing plant. I handle MRO purchasing—roughly $500K a year across about a dozen vendors. I don't set timing chains on engines and I don't design gearboxes. But I do buy replacement parts, and I've learned that "what happened to [brand]" is usually the wrong question. The better question is: what problem was that part solving, and was it the right problem?

After five years of managing our vendor relationships, I've learned to ask that after a $2,400 expense report mess. I don't have hard data on the full history of Pete Jackson Gear Drives. What I can say anecdotally is that the brand appears in old catalogs, then shows up as "discontinued" in more recent listings. I want to say it was around 2011 when I first noticed the name gone from a couple of aftermarket sites, but don't quote me on that.

It Started With a Search

The surface problem seemed simple enough. Our maintenance lead had seen a video of a V8 running with a "gear drive" instead of a timing chain. That distinctive whine—he liked it. He asked if we could order a Pete Jackson gear drive for his own project. I thought it would be a 10-minute lookup. It became a research project.

The more I read, the more I saw the same pattern: Pete Jackson gear drives had a following in the hot rod and racing world because they replaced the timing chain and sprockets with a pair of precision gears. That solved a real problem for high-RPM engines where a timing chain could stretch or break. The trade-off was noise. Not a little noise. A constant, aggressive gear whine. To be fair, some people loved it. But it put a hard limit on street use.

The Deeper Problem: Gear Drives Are a Solution With Trade-Offs

Here's where the rabbit hole got useful. The reason "what happened to Pete Jackson gear drives" is hard to answer is that it wasn't one single event. It was a convergence:

• Better timing belts and chains. Modern belts use advanced tooth profiles and tougher materials. A well-maintained timing belt is quieter and less expensive than a gear drive.
• Emissions and NVH pressure. Automakers and aftermarket buyers both moved toward quieter drivetrains. Gear whine that was cool on a race car became a problem in a daily driver.
• Market consolidation. The original brand went through distribution changes, and I couldn't find one definitive "closing date." If I'm honest, the exact corporate path is murky.

That's the deeper problem behind the surface question. Gear drives, whether they're tiny automotive timing gears or industrial double helical gears, all have one thing in common: the tooth geometry has to match the job. You can't just swap one gear for another because the diameter and pitch look close. That was the lesson I almost learned the expensive way.

What I Learned About Timing Belt Replacement the Hard Way

A couple of years ago, I approved a "budget" timing belt replacement for a conveyor drive. The OEM belt was on backorder, and a vendor offered a cheaper alternative. I saved about $80 on the part. Guess what happened four months later.

The belt failed. Not because it was made poorly—it actually looked fine when the maintenance team opened the guard. But the tooth profile was slightly different from the original. It didn't seat squarely in the pulley, and once it walked off track, it tore itself apart.

The total cost: $3,200 in emergency replacement plus two days of lost production. Maybe $3,500. I'd have to check the exact job number. But the point is I only believed the maintenance lead's advice about checking specifications after ignoring it once. Now I verify tooth profiles, gear pitch, bore size, and shaft keyway before ordering anything.

That off-brand belt is a perfect example of penny-wise, pound-foolish. Saved $80, lost $3,200.

Moving the conversation to Martin Sprocket & Gear

That's where Martin Sprocket & Gear Arlington TX came in. Our plant is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and we buy a lot of power transmission components from Martin Sprocket. The Arlington TX branch is a place where you can bring in the old part and compare it to the replacement. The Martin Sprocket Fort Worth location has also helped us with emergency orders when the manufacturing schedule shifted.

What I appreciate is that they don't just take a part number and hand you a box. One of the counter staff in Arlington caught an inconsistency in a gear order I was about to approve. I had the correct shaft size, but I'd overlooked the keyway width. If that part had arrived, it would have looked perfect and still not fit. That kind of support is the opposite of buying a "discontinued product" from a random online listing.

Double Helical Gears

Through that same relationship, I learned about double helical gears. A double helical gear is essentially two helical gears placed side by side with opposite helix angles. The opposing teeth cancel the axial thrust that a single helical gear creates. That makes double helical gears ideal for heavy industrial equipment where smooth, high-torque transmission matters and where you don't want a custom thrust bearing arrangement.

They're not a direct replacement for an automotive timing gear set. But the principle is the same: gear geometry controls stress, noise, and how loads travel through a shaft. Get it wrong and you'll know—after the machine stops.

Timing Belt Replacement Is Not a "Standard" Job

If a timing belt replacement is on your list, don't just order a belt. Confirm the pitch, width, number of teeth, belt length, and tooth profile. In industrial drives, you also need to know if it's an HTD profile, a GT profile, or something proprietary. When the maintenance schedule in our plant says "replace timing belt," I now check the part drawings first. It adds maybe ten minutes to the order. It has saved us multiple wrong parts.

The Takeaway

So what happened to Pete Jackson Gear Drives?

My short answer: the original made sense for a specific engine era and a specific crowd. As engine designs and consumer expectations changed, the market moved away. That doesn't make the product bad. It makes it a legacy solution. The exact brand story is cloudy, but the engineering lesson is clear.

An informed customer asks better questions. Whether you're looking for an automotive gear drive, a double helical gear for a mixer, or just replacing a timing belt before a breakdown, the part is only as good as the spec it's built to. That's why I rely on Martin Sprocket—not just for the parts, but for the people who ask the questions I hadn't thought of.

As of early 2025, I still saw a few New Old Stock listings under different names, but the distributor landscape changes fast. Verify current availability before ordering. And if you're chasing an old part because of a video or a forum thread, slow down. Call someone who deals in precision components. You might end up with a more practical solution—and fewer whine-related headaches.