NyCrAzY

Just out of curiosity.

What is the overdrive button for?

Mines always on. How about you guys?

Any benifets to it? Thanks.

Australian

4th gear.............to short answer dribble dribble some more yadda yadda

IndyRX300

Overdrive is pirmarily used to keep your RPMs down at highway speeds to preserve better gas mileage.

salimshah

To answer your question ,, I keep my od ON. Helps in fuel economy.

I would suggest read the owner's manual which gives details when to use it.

For manual transmission, the driver makes the choice which gear to be in for best power/economy and in auto-trans the choice is made by the system. Auto-trans can be just at the edge of one-gear vs the other and it keeps switching between the two (called hunting for the right gear). This happens at the top gear where power-and-engineRpms factor has a wider range. So to keep the beast out of its misery the option is given to the driver.

My recommendation is keep it on till you get into the fear hunt issue [heavy weight being carried at cruising speed on a not-flat road]. Once out of the situation, switch back to od on.

Salim

lexus114

Keep in mind running with O/D off creates more heat in the trans. I second what Salim suggested.

Lexmex

Many years ago I tried a test involving the O/D button and the PWR button. Although it doesn't sound great, it is statistically significant in the scheme of 1/4 mile racing, the PWR button on and the O/D button off led to a consistent .1 second drop in my times.

lexus114

Interesting.

trhs75

If you're heading down a long hill or mountain, you would want to switch the O/D off first when you need a little engine braking to keep your brakes cool.

rx300mm

I use it during winter slippery roads, going down hill, it switches from 4th gear to 3rd so it takes in control if need to slow down or stop.

Aprazur

What's a "winter slippery road"? Or....What's a "hill"? (lol)

Jerry S... In Paradise

salimshah

Could be place where there are no bugs.

Sorry just could not resist.

Salim

rx300mm

Aprazur and Salimshah, that is funny. We Canadian are used to those comments Driving on snow is fun and thats when you really thankful for the ECT feathure that controls the drive.

Lexmex

In Mexico (not so much here in Florida), but because of the inclines and declines on the highways, I used to drop it into SNOW Mode quite a few times when it got wet. Really helped out on the handling.

djchan

I agree with Lexmex. I always turn off overdrive when I need to get up to speed fast. I find that with it on, it lowers the shift points.