Does you car have overdrive function? If you do, then do you know what’s it for and how to use them?
If this sounds new to you and want to learn more about your car, then this blog post is for you. Overdrive is a riddle to most newbie drivers as most of them only knows how to drive their cars but don’t know their features.
Read on and learn how this function works and how you can maximize your car’s full potential.
What is Overdrive?
When the word “overdrive” comes to mind, the first thing that you can think of is that it is highly related to your car’s performance attributes. It’s silly because it is exactly the opposite.
This feature is generally not a thing in today’s modern cars, which is the reason why most young drivers don’t know or has few knowledge about them. This function is a thing in the past where cars don’t have higher gears and has engines that consumes a lot of fuel.
So yeah, overdrive isn’t a term for your car’s speed potential, but a feature that will help reduce your engine’s revolutions per minute at sustained higher speeds with the aim to save fuel.
Yes, it is made to achieve high fuel efficiency!
But that’s not all. Overdrive also helps lessen the strain on the engine which results to quieter and smoother operation. This also leads to less engine wear.
Overdrive Function Properties
The overdrive switch is commonly located at the shifter/gear lever. You can turn this function on or off as you wish.
It functions as a “high gear” mode for a transmission which can also be looked at as an added gear that helps widens the transmission’s shifting range. When shifting higher gear, the powertrain turns to lower gear ratios and allows the engine to perform at lower RPMs when cruising at high speeds.
A common engine will operate at lower gears when greater output and torque are needed. But overdrive inhibits acceleration and maximum power in exchange for greater fuel economy. For most engineers and drivers worldwide, having O/D is worth the exchange especially in today’s high gas prices.
In automatic transmission vehicles, overdrive is initiated by the ECU whenever the car reaches the proper speed.
For manual transmission vehicles, O/D acts as the highest gear but has to be activated by the driver. For example, the 5th gear is the overdrive in a five-speed manual transmission car. For 6-speed transmission vehicles, that gear serves as the overdrive, and so on.
In today’s modern vehicles, the overdrive function is not a common thing as modern transmissions offer higher gearing such as 5th gears up to 8th gears and more. This is the reason why modern cars don’t need the overdrive feature anymore. But not all of them!
One of my cars is a 2023 Mitsubishi Xpander, a crossover car that is only released in Southeast Asia. It does have a 4-speed transmission which is not ideal for highway cruising. The answer is of course adding an overdrive function. This is the reason why the Xpander is one of the most fuel efficient cars today.
How and When to Use Overdrive?
To activate this feature, just press the O/D button on your car lever (if your car has one). You will see an indicator on your gauge cluster when your O/D is off. So this means that you won’t see any indicators on your dashboard when your overdrive is currently activated.
The question is, when should you use overdrive function?
You may activate overdrive whenever you need to achieve your car’s full power and torque for acceleration. For example in a highway, climbing or if you want to pass a car in front of you. All these added power and torque will not be utilized if your overdrive is turned on, that’s why it is only applicable in highway cruise driving.
Of course, if you opt to save more fuel for your car, then I suggest to just keep your O/D turned on all the time. There are no issues if you choose either way.
Summary
That’s all to this topic guys. If you properly and correctly utilize the overdrive function, you can clearly get all of its advantages with regards to fuel economy and engine wear reduction. Yes, understanding every feature in your car and their applications are the key to reaping their benefits!
Below is my Youtube video where I discuss Overdrive in detail. The video is in Tagalog language. Thank you for watching.
