I was just wondering, on an auto car with over drive. OD is another gear, right?

If you turn OD off, what does that mean, it will not switch into final gear, even if you keep pumping?


sorry really noob to this.

 

You talking about a specific car? Most times that's marketing mumbo-jumbo that just means another gear.

Ford Contour has a button you press that keeps it out from 4th gear. This does EXACTLY the same thing as taking your Honda & putting the shift lever into D3.

The days are long gone when top gear in any transmission was direct-drive. Manual transmissions with separate OD gears (old british cars, '76 Volvos...) are something else entirely.

 

Both my '82 and '88 Volvos (244 DL and 744 Ti, respectively) had the M46 transmission - five speed manual with the "fifth speed" being a button-operated overdrive. The way I understood it, when you pressed the button, it allowed another gear to interact with fourth, acting as a reductor and lowering the ratio. Why they did it that way, I have NO idea.

 

In the only cars with OD i've driven, (96 ford econoline 350 and 82 toyota cressida) OD just meant it didn't shift to high gear (fourth), and would upshift at a higher RPM (in an attempt to hold it in a lower gear) :dunno:

 

Didn't we just discuss this in another section?

Overdrive, in a Honda automatic, is the last gear of the four speeds (Civic, Integra, Prelude, Vigor, etc) and the last two gears of the five speeds (newer CL, TL, etc). Overdrive is just a nickname for a gear with a ratio of under 1.00.

 

Is there any other use of not using OD, other than higher rev/racing?

 

You can avoid using it to:

1) Waste more gas.
2) Kill your engine faster.

Imagine driving without overdrive being like driving around in second gear, just not quite as bad. There is no benifit to staying in the lower gears unless you are at the track.