I’m assuming it’s the overdrive button on the side of my gearshift. 2012 Nissan Altima, base model. Everything I googled assumes I know more than how to change oil. Thanks in advance!!! 😊
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OD standard for overdrive. It tells the transmission not to shift to the highest gear. You want to use this when descending a hill and you want the engine to provide more engine braking.
It’s a feature that’s part of the manual gear control. Like how you can select only 2nd gear or 1st gear if you move the gear lever further past the normal ‘D’ position for driving forwards. Just more convenient to toggle on/off.
“Overdrive” is the nickname of your highest gear. It’s the only gear whose ratio turns the transmission/gearbox output faster than the input side where the engine is, which is where the name “overdrive” comes from. When you press the button, you might see a message “O/D off” on your dash. This means that your top gear is disabled, and the transmission will max out at your 2nd highest gear instead, shifting down if it’s in that gear now.
Lower gears means the engine is spinning faster. This is very useful when hauling a heavy load (eg: trailer) or when going down a steep hill at speed. If you’re on the highway and there’s a steep down-hill section, don’t ride the brakes as you go down. Instead, press this OD button and release both pedals. The faster-spinning engine, but not getting any gas, will want to slow down to a stop since it’s not getting fuel. This will actually help slow down the car as it goes down the hill since the wheels will turn the engine instead, and along with that all the other thing like air conditioning, the alternator (electricity generator) etc.
When doing the hill thing, be sure to hit the button again when you reach the bottom so the car shifts back into your real top gear. Using a lower gear than necessary wastes fuel, so don’t leave it like that.
it stands for “overdrive”.
it changes how your car shifts gears (specifically, its stops you shifting into the highest gear range) to make it better in some road conditions. generally any time where you need the higher torque of the lower gears rather than the higher absolute fuel efficiency of the higher gear.
unless you live in a very hilly area, i;d just leave OD on and not worry about it, unless you keep finding the car feels like it “lacks power” going uphill or something, then turn it off.
“OD” is for “overdrive”. When you push the button, the car’s computer will hold the transmission in a lower gear. This is useful if you are going up a steep hill and want more power. It may also hold the gear if you are going downhill, which is useful for engine braking.
It’s a mode for your car.
Overdrive Off means your car will do it’s best to drive smoothly and with good gas efficiency.
Overdrive On means your car will do it’s best to give you responsive performance when accelerating or decelerating, at the cost of gas efficiency, and more strain on your engine in the long run.
Overdrive is the highest gear and it gives better fuel efficiency for highway driving. You have a button to turn it off in case you’re towing and need more torque or are driving in the mountains and want more engine speed for climbing or more engine braking for descending.
In 99% of cases you’re probably OK to just leave overdrive enabled and enjoy some better fuel economy.
It turns off overdrive for mountain driving or towing, so your transmission isn’t shifting constantly
Imagine on a bicycle, the tiny gear on the back is the OD (over drive gear).
Just like on a bicycle you may want the extra gear when ur going kinda fast and kind of steady, your legs will move slower but the bike is going fast.
That button makes the computer use the tiny gear, or it makes it not use the tiny gear.when it uses it the engine goes slower but the car is still moving fast.
Overall its hard to move a tiny gear when ur moving slowly.. so that’s why you turn it off or on on a bike and on a car.
It was the cheapest way to implement control of an extra gear, when most cars had only 3 positions available on the shifter for the forward gears.
These positions were used to limit the car to 1st gear (L), 1st and 2nd (2) and all gears (D).
When 4 speed transmissions came about it would’ve involved extra cost to add a 4th point to the gear selector, so a button was often used in place.
This button (as explained in other replies) then allowed the trans to access all the gears, or only the first 3.
Now there are common trans with 5-10 speeds, so we have the +/- gear select buttons, paddles, or ‘manual’ shifter positions, to avoid heaps of buttons and gear stick positions.
The best way to use the overdrive button is when your transmission is gear hunting. That’s when your car keeps jumping between driver and overdrive trying to maintain speed when under a loads. You push the button to keep it in drive and that helps prevent heart build up from the transmission shifting back and forth between the two gears.
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