What is the overdrive button in a ford truck used for?

What is the overdrive button in a ford truck used for?

I'm driving my dad's ford truck this month until my car is repaired. There's a button on the steering collum that says… Overdrive… With a on/off button. My dad said to turn off the overdrive when I'm driving in town and on when on highway. What is it used for and should I keep it turned off?

Turn it ON. Only if you are (say) climbing a long hill and the transmission starts changing frequently from overdrive to top gear and back, should you turn off overdrive (to keep it in top). But remember to turn it back on!

Go with technobuff

For many years ford suggested exactly what your told you to do, so follow instructions turn off OD in town, turn in on for highway use. Fords transmissions would shift in to OD about 35 to 42 mph with light throttle pressure ( gas pedal up) and shift back out of OD when you pushed the pedal back down so they continually were in and out of OD in town, Causing 4th gear (OD) to prematurely fail. And everybody that knows older fords knows using OD in town will kill the trans quickly, and if it's a powerstroke Diesel, even worse. The Ford engineers I worked with couldn't agree on why the failures, lack of pump pressure, or just mechanical stress but we had hundreds of Fords and the drivers never questioned why they just did what they were told, saved me 10s of thousands in transmission rebuilds. Ford tranny guys gave us a box of stickers to put on the dash that read turn off OD under 45mph and when towing…

Best just do as your Dad has asked. To answer your question it turns the overdrive on and off. Overdrive is the same as a higher gear to make it simple. You Dad wants to keep the motor running at higher rpms in the city so the motor doesn't carbon up. On the highway you use overdrive for better gas mileage. I'll add that if on the highway and you encounter a steep hill or grade it's best to turn the overdrive off until you get to the top of the inclination.

Short and simple. Turn it off when towing a load. Otherwise leave it alone

First time diesel owner 1996 7.3l 4x4 the overdrive issue I don't see a lite come on to let me know if i'm in overdrive or not but I take it overdrive is a higher gear for freeway driving better gas miles but when pulling a load up hill od off to go into a lower gear to pull the hill correct. So in city driving OD off lower gear riding.