Company Profile
Weddle Industries is a supplier of high performance transaxle and driveline components for special application vehicles. The company is headquartered in Goleta, California, where we maintain a large inventory of racing gears, clutches, shifters, gear oil pumps, torque converters, axles, constant velocity joints, and other driveline products, all of which are available through an extensive dealer network.
Our gears and transaxles have earned a growing list of results:
- First, Second, Third Place — 2013 BITD Parker 425 Class 1500
- First Place — 2012 SCORE Baja 1000 Class 10
- First Place— 2012 HDRA Fireworks 500 Class 1
- First Place— 2011 Blue Water Desert Challenge Class 1
- First Place— 2011 BITD Parker 425 Class 10
- First Place— 2010 SCORE Baja 1000 Class 1
- First Place— 2009 and 2010 BITD Vegas to Reno Race, Class 1
We are proud sponsors of the following organizations: ASA, Blue Ribbon Coalition, CleanDesert.org, Friends of the Oceano Dunes, and ORBA.
History
John Weddle started building high performance off-road transaxles in his garage in Long Beach, California in the early 1970s. His income as a rookie Huntington Beach firefighter was just enough to take care of his young family, but he wanted to try his hand at off-road racing and needed a way to earn extra money. The part-time transaxle business was a perfect fit, and John used it as a means to supplement his income throughout the following years. By the late '70s, John's son Chris was helping around the shop by sweeping floors, washing parts, and tearing apart transaxles.
As the years progressed, off-road cars got faster and transaxles began to break more often. John and Chris struggled to find quality components that would hold up to extreme abuse, so they decided to begin manufacturing their own. In October of 1991, John and Chris each put up $3,000 to make a small batch of high quality super-diffs, and the fledgling Weddle Gears was born.
Sweat equity was the key to success. Every penny of profit was put back into the business and sales began to increase. John and Chris found themselves in need of a knowledgeable manufacturer that was willing to cut high quality racing gears in small batches, and in 1993 they stumbled across Albins Off-Road Gear in Australia. They were impressed with the quality of the Albins product, as well as their modern high-tech approach to manufacturing. A long-term relationship blossomed, and to this day Albins is a primary supplier of high performance gears and many other parts for Weddle Industries, all made exclusively to Weddle's proprietary specs and dimensions.
In 1996, when Mike Mendeola introduced his new MD4S transaxle, Weddle Industries worked out a deal to supply the gears for the project. A few prototype Weddle Racing gear sets were made and tested in the first MD transaxles and, based on some very successful results, another long-term relationship was formed. To this day, Weddle is the primary supplier for gears in all Mendeola MD4, MD5, S4, and S5 transaxles.
Weddle Industries eventually outgrew the garage in Long Beach and, in August of 1999, the business was relocated to Goleta, California. At this time, Ron Weddle joined Weddle Industries as both an owner and a valuable leader in charge of the day-to-day operations of the business (Ron is Chris' cousin and the son of John's long time racing partner, Dick Weddle).
Currently, the Weddles spend much of their time working to stay one step ahead of the rapidly evolving high performance transaxle market. Weddle Industries has nine employees and occupies a 24,000 square foot building, where they maintain a huge inventory of racing gears, ring & pinion sets, clutch kits, shifters, oil pumps, torque converter packages, gaskets, bearings, synchronizers, and many other components, all of which are available through an extensive dealer network.